Growth and Yield of Khon-Khao Mushroom (Lentinus squarrosulus Mont.) Cultured in Different Spawn Materials

Abstract

In the future, it is expected that sorghum grain will be needy and high priced due to the reduction of its production and the increased demand for use as animal feeds and ethanol production. Therefore, it is important to find other materials to replace sorghum grain in mushroom spawn production. The research aims to study the growth and yield of Khon-Khao mushroom (Lentinus squarrosulus Mont.) cultured in different spawn materials. Khon-Khao mushroom strain K2 from Wiang Hong farm, Mae Mo district, Lampang province was used in this study. Completely randomized design (CRD) experiments were planned using four replications with three types of spawn materials including sorghum grain, bamboo wood and Leucaena wood. The mushroom growth was measured by the number of days for mycelium to grow entirely in spawns and composts. The mushroom yield was measured by the mushrooms per bag, fresh mushroom weight per bag and mushroom width and height. The results were as follows: 1) the number of days for mycelium to grow entirely in spawns produced from sorghum grain, bamboo wood and Leucaena wood were 10.28, 12.70, and 17.75 days, respectively; 2) the number of days for mycelium to grow entirely in composts for mushroom from sorghum grain, bamboo wood, and Leucaena wood spawns were 23.16, 18.12, and 18.02 days, respectively; 3) mushroom cultured in the spawn produced from sorghum grain spawn had the highest yield in all aspects namely the number of mushrooms per bag of 17.95, fresh mushroom weight per bag of 61.13 g and mushroom width and height of 4.88 and 6.32 cm, respectively. These results demonstrate the possibility of using wood in mushroom spawn cultivation instead of sorghum grain. This is because the use of spawns produced from bamboo wood and Leucaena wood could shorten spawn running time by 5 days, although the yield is lower than that of the spawn produced from sorghum grain. In the future, if further research works are conducted to determine the optimal conditions for mushroom production using wood spawns, the mushroom production will be effective in terms of mushroom growth and yield.