Strain Improvement of Abalone Mushroom (Pleurotus cystidiosus) Using Di-mon Mating

Abstract

    Abalone mushroom (Pleurotus cystidiosus O.K. Mill.) is an economically important mushroom. The improvement of better hybrid strains is necessary for commercial production. The objective of this research was to improve Abalone mushroom hybrid strains with high yield and better features using the di-mon mating technique, which is the interspecific crossing between the dikaryotic mycelium of Hed Pao-hue 3 (PC3) used as the mother strain and the monokaryotic mycelium from 13 strains used as father strains, to obtain 14 Abalone mushroom hybrid strains. These hybrid strains were cultivated in 800 g sawdust substrate bags to observe their yield performance for 3 months compared with that of Hed Pao-hue 3 which is a commercial strain. The results showed that the Abalone mushroom hybrid strain PC3×SPC21-1 gave the highest yield of 150.7 g/bag, which was not significantly different from that of Pao-hue 3, which gave a yield of 126.3 g/bag. Furthermore, the days required for PC3×SPC21-1 to complete spawn running were 55.4 days, and primordial initiation were 14.9 days, while Hed Pao-hue 3 required longer days as 58.9 and 20.2 days, respectively. In addition, some of the Abalone mushroom hybrid strains had some features better than those of Hed Pao-hue 3 such as high content of protein and carbohydrates but low content of fat. From the results, 4 Abalone mushroom hybrid strains that had high yield and better features, PC3×SPC21-1, PC3×SPC14-24, PC3×SPC23-17 and PC3×SPC11-4, were selected for cultivation testing under farmer’s farm conditions to distinguish the best potential Abalone hybrid strain for commercial production.