Spent mushroom substrate: a potential sustainable substrate for agriculture

Abstract

Background/Objectives: Mushroom cultivation is an eco-friendly activity as it exploits the wastes from agriculture, poultry, brewery, etc. and in turn produces fruit bodies with excellent and unique nutritional and medicinal attributes, but also produces Spent Mushroom Substrate (SMS) after crop harvest, which creates various environmental problems including groundwater contamination and other nuisance if mishandled. Due to this, there is an urgent need for a more suitable solution for disposing off SMS. The present study has been undertaken to evaluate the effect of Spent Mushroom Substrate (SMS) of different edible mushrooms as a biofertilizer on the growth of Vigna radiata.

Methods/Statistical analysis: The present pot experimental study focuses on the analysis of physicochemical properties of plant growth medium and also to evaluate the effect of SMS on the growth of Vigna radiata with pot experiments by considering morphological and biochemical parameters. Three experimental setups was carried with one being control where seeds were grown with soil and other two with 50% SMS + 50% Soil and 75% SMS + 25% soil respectively.

Findings: The study showed that the plant grown with 75% SMS had higher germination and faster growth than the plant grown in just soil, this can be due to available nutrients and minerals in SMS.

Novelty/Applications: All results showed that spent mushroom waste can be efficiently considered as a biofertilizer to replace the use of synthetic fertilizers and thus the utilization of SMS as a bio-fertilizer can reduce the wastes in the environment; which were generated during mushroom cultivation.