Effects of Amount of Rice Bran and Number of Sawdust Spawn on the Growth and Yield of Milky Mushroom (Calocybe indica)

Abstract

Currently, cultivation of milky mushroom is interested by many growers in Thailand. However, few information about production process and suitable supplementary for growth of the milky mushroom in sawdust substrate has been reported. Therefore, the objective of this study is to investigate the effect of amount of rice bran and numbers of sawdust spawn per pot on growth and yield of milky mushroom. The experiment was divided into 2 parts; 1) study on the effect of amount of rice bran on growth and yield of the milky mushroom. The experiment was completely randomized design which there were 6 treatments and each treatment put in rice bran for 0, 2.5, 5, 10, 15 and 20% of sawdust. 2) Study on the numbers of sawdust spawn per pot on growth and yield of milky mushroom. The sawdust supplemented with 20% rice bran in the total volume of 900 g per bag was packed in 3.5 × 12 inch size of plastic bag and pasteurization. The experiment was completely randomized design which 4 treatments i.e. 2, 3, 4 and 5 sawdust spawns per a 15–inch pot. The results showed that the sawdust supplemented with 20% rice bran was the best treatment in promoting growth and yield of milky mushroom. With this treatment, the pinhead formation was only 17.7 days and the first harvesting was 33 days after casing. The mushroom cap diameter was 14.7 cm and the length of the stalk was 7.5 cm, resulting in the total yield of 640.4 g/pot. While the sawdust supplemented with 5% rice bran, the commonly used formula for mushroom growers, gave the total yield of 303.0 g/pot only. In addition, use of sawdust spawn 5 bags/pot promoted the highest yields with the pinhead formation period of 10 days. The first harvest was at 18 days after casing. The mushroom cap diameter was 11.2 cm and the length of the stalk was 14.2 cm, resulting in the total yield of 1,295.4 g/pot. The sawdust spawn 5 bags/pot treatment has the biological efficiency of 51.8%. While the sawdust spawn of 2 bags/pot treatment, the milky mushroom gave the total yield of 348.2 g/pot, has only 34.8% biological efficiency.