Mushroom cultivation by using agricultural wastes

Abstract

Agricultural waste also known as lignocellulosic residue is a renewable resource that can be used for mushroom cultivation. Empty fruit bunch (EFB) and paddy straw (PS) are categorized as agricultural waste and abundant in every Malaysian palm oil plantation and paddy field. Mushroom cultivation using agricultural waste promises nutritious mushroom and spent mushroom substrate (SMS) that can be used for producing beneficial products such as ruminant feedstock and fertilisers in post-harvest cultivation. SMS is defined as residual biomass generated by commercial mushroom industry after harvesting period. This study aims to reuse agricultural waste generated from the two largest agricultural sectors i.e. palm oil plantation and paddy field, in mushroom cultivation and application of SMS in the post-harvest cultivation which have potential to be used as supplement for ruminant feedstock. The techniques used in this study were named as Process A, B, C and D which consist of drying, grinding, substrates mixing, sterilization, spawning, incubation and harvesting process. Then, the optimum process was used in subsequent cultivation to determine the optimum ratio between ratio A, B, C and D. At the end of harvesting period, SMS was tested for nutrient composition, feeding analysis, hazardous metal composition and bacteriological properties. The results showed novelty in Process D, which obtained optimum yield for three substrates i.e. sawdust, EFB and PS substrates as 232.5±50.3 g, 134.8 ± 82.4 g, and 127.7 ± 25.6 g, respectively. In addition, ratio B comprises 76.0% EFB, 20.0% rice bran and 4.0% agriculture hydrated lime obtained the highest percentage of recovering EFB at the end of mushroom cultivation of 63.2%. Another finding indicated that EFB based-SMS contains adequate nutrients to be applied as supplement for ruminant feedstock when compared to animal feed pellets. Furthermore, EFB-based SMS contains desirable feeding analysis and acceptable amount of Escherichia coli which is suitable to be used as ruminant feeding. In summary, this study shows that both, EFB and PS are suitable agricultural waste to be reused in mushroom cultivation, henceforth, reduced the generation of waste in oil palm plantations and paddy fields. EFB was the most applicable substrate to be used for commercialization purposes compared to PS due to high production of mushroom. Furthermore, EFB substrate can be applied further as supplement to ruminant feedstock in the post-harvest cultivation of SMS. Hence, this cycle promotes zero waste discharge. This study can be extended using other abundant agricultural waste in Malaysia such as cocoa or pineapple waste in order to minimise agricultural waste generation.