A new fungal disease of Zizyphus mairitiana Lamk in India

In September 1976, the authors collected the leaves of Zizyphus mauritiana Lamk bearing light brown to dark brown spherical as well as irregular spots. These on examination gave Alternaria tenuissima (Kunze ex Pers.) Wiltshire, a pathogen causing leaf spot disease, not reported earlier on this host from India. 

The spot were spherical to irregular, not exceeding 0.5 cm square of the leaf on ventral surface. These were light to dark brown. The disease starts as a small pin head sized light brown spot both on the older and younger leaves. Extensions occur with the aging and the spot turns dark brown. The infected regions ultimately become nacrotic. Artificially infected plants developed typical spots of disease in 10-15 days and reinoculation showed the presence of Alternaria tenuissima. 

 The mycelium is septate, oblivaceous, green to light brown, conidiophores mostly branched, arising singly or in fascicles, brown, varying in length, straight to slightly bent, slightly swollen at the base, 2-5 septate and 28-125X3-4µ in size. Conidia light brown to brown, muriform or obclavate or elliptical with short beaks scarred at the both ends, catenulate, thick walled, about 28-112X8-15µ.

Alternaria tenuissima  has been reported on a number of hosts from India but not on Zizyphus mauritiana Lamk; hence Zizyphus mauritiana Lamk is new host record for Alternaria tenuissima for India and the disease has been described as new leaf spot disease reported for the first time in India.

The fungus has been deposited in the herbarium of Commonwealth Mycological Institute, Kew, England as IMI. 210036a and herb. Botany Department, K.S. Saket P.G. College, Faizabad as RSK-271.

Cite this as: Kanaujia R.S. and R. Kishor (1977):A new fungal disease of Zizyphus mairitiana Lamk in India. Fertilizer Technology. 14(3): 286.

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मेरी कलम 01:26  No comment

Patsan stem sticks, A promising substrate for cultivation of Pleurotus sajor-caju (Fr.) Sing.

Patsan stem sticks were used as the substrate for the cultivation of Pleurotus sajor-caju during beginning of January to middle February in 1990. The sterilization of water soaked of one foot long bare patsan stem stocks was done at 60-70°C for one and half hours and these were spread over the sterilized cemented floor for one hour to drain off excess of adhered water. The sowing was done in polythene bags (60X45 cm) with freshly prepared spawn on the boiled wheat grain in inter-spaces of the stem sticks and in this way one kg of substrate was mixed with 40 gm of wheat spawn. Ten replicates of such bags were made which were incubated till the appearance of sporophore primordia. The bags were removed after 6 days of sowing and compact bundle of substrate was watered daily in the evening. During experimentation the temperature ranged between 15.5-20.5°C and relative humidity varied between 70-80 per cent. The picking of the mushroom was done at regular interval of 5 days after the removal of bags from the substrate and the yield calculated was 1.15 kg/kg of dry substrate.

Cited this as: Singh C.S., Prasad A.B. and R.S. Kanaujia (1991): Patsan stem sticks, A promising substrate for cultivation of Patsan stem sticks, A promising substrate for cultivation of Pleurotus sajor-caju (Fr.) Sing. (Fr.) Sing. National Symposium on Current Trends in Taxonomy of Phytopathogenic Microorganisms & Other Aspects of Plant Pathology organized by Department of Botany, University of Gorakhpur, India. January, 27-28, 1991. (Abstract 72)

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मेरी कलम 23:26  No comment

Comparison of Growth and Development of Pleurotus florida against Wastes from Animal Origin

The mushroom produces extra cellular enzymes which helps for hydrolysing the complex organic substances into simpler forms that can be utilized and assimilated by them or release in surroundings. Generally they utilized the substrates from plant origin i.e. lignocellulosic materials which comprises of three major groups of polymers i.e. cellulose, hemicelluloses and lignin [1] which represent the most abundant renewable organic matter on the earth. These substrates are used as a growing medium for oyster mushroom. It includes cereal wastes [2], millet wastes [3], Oil crop wastes [4], Cotton wastes [5], palm wastes [6,7], pulses wastes [8], vegetable and fruit wastes [9], Beverage [10], sugarcane crop waste [11], wood and wood product [12], grasses [13] and weed [14] and spices plant waste [15]. Bracket fungi belonging to order aphyllophorales were also mentioned for Pleurotus cultivation [16]. Among various mushrooms, Pleurotus sp is due most versatile, capable of colonizing and degrading a variety of lignocellulosic wastes into edible protein [17] and are considered suitable for bio-conversion of agro-waste in to food and feed in developing countries [18]. Apart from agro-wastes, few industrial wastes viz., paper residues [19], baby dipers [20], oxo-biodegradable plastic waste [21] etc. have also been tried for the growing of oyster mushroom. Pleurotus cultivation on animal wastes is little documented, therefore, it was interesting to observe that how the mushroom reacts when those substrates are given them as a food source. This investigation was conducted to know the efficiency of Pleurotus florida against animal wastes, viz., human hair and egg shell in respect of various parameters of mushroom production.

      RESULTS

The results regarded various parameters of mushroom production are illustrated in Table and Plate.

 Mushroom development:

All the substrate showed mycelia colonization. The mycelial growth was significantly (P=0.05) faster on egg shell (18 days) as compared to human hair (23 days). Visual observations regarding mycelia characters also indicated that there was a compact mycelia growth with dense strand in case of egg shell. The interim period of Pin-head formation was observed following the invasion of substrates by mycelia growth. It occurred quickly in human (26 days), followed by egg shell (28 days).  Although, egg shell took least time for spawn run, it shows delayed primordial initiation. The time required for maturity of fruiting bodies was observed 32 days and 33 days, respectively for human hair and egg shell.

 

Mushroom yield:

The crop of mushroom was harvested in four flushes where yield and biological efficiency ranged 155-165 gm, 31-33 % in both the animal waste. Between them, human hair (165gm, 33%) produced higher yield and biological efficiency over egg shell (155gm, 31%), although, these were at par to each other.

 

Number and average weight of sporocarp:

Human hair and egg shell produced 27 and 25 mushroom sporocarp during the entire crop cycle, respectively, which were found at par to each other. The weight per sporocarp was observed 6.11 gm and 6.20 gm for HH and ES, respectively without any significant difference.

 

     DISCUSSION

The mushroom utilized all the substrate for their growth and sporophore formation which indicated that all of them have met the nutritional requirement desired for fungal growth. The variation in the number of days taken for a spawn to complete colonization of a given substrate is a function of the fungal strain, growth conditions and substrate type [24]. This variation could, in turn, be attributed to the variations in chemical composition and Carbon to Nitrogen ratio (C:N) of the substrates used [25].

Among animal wastes, highest sporophore yield was observed from human hair which might be due to utilization of keratin by Pleurotus florida. It is well established that major portion of human hair is keratin which is a fibrous and recalcitrant structural protein and is the third most abundant polymer after cellulose and chitin. Keratin is also the structural component of skin, feather, horns, hooves, nails, beaks, reptilian asteaderm and fish teeth and slime [26] which can be efficiently degraded by bacteria [27,28,29], actinomycetes [30,31] and fungi due to keratinase activity [32]. Fungal involvement in keratin degradation and keratinase production was shown by many workers [33,34,35,36,37,38]. Earlier, many ascomycetes [39] were reported for keratin degradation of feather [40,41] and hair alone [42] and in combinations. Although, there is a little exiting research on keratinase of basidiomycetes, there are few reports about keratinase production by genus Pleurotus spp. Recently, this activity was reported from white rot fungi, P. pulmonarius both in vivo and in vitro, using hair as a substrate [43]. For the growing of Pleurotus spp., paddy straw is found most common and efficient substrate [44] which generally yielded 85-95% fresh mushrooms. Comparatively lower yield in hair substrate was probably due to presence of numerous disulfide bonds (S-S) [45,46] which are considered to be responsible for the stability of keratin and its resistance to chemical agents and enzymatic lysis (proteases).

Egg shell shows compact mycelial growth in our experiment. It might be due to their Ca and organic content i.e. shell membrane which favour the vegetative growth of mushroom. Earlier, egg shell was found suitable as a supplement for the mycelia growth of seven different species of Hericium [47]. The egg shell comprises calcified shell and shell membrane including inner and outer membrane. It contains about 95% calcium carbonate. 0.3 % phosphorus, 0.3% magnesium and trace of Na, P, Zn, Mn, Fe and Cu. The importance of calcium to the growth of fungi was already reported by several workers [48]. [49] found best mycelia growth when media containing all the essential macro nutrient including calcium while media without Ca gave lowest mycelial dry weight. Egg shell also produced mushroom sporophores. The delay in primordial development was because of the fact that initiation of fruit bodies only occurs when the substrate mycelium has attained a certain threshold density. [50] reported agricultural lime and egg shell powder yielded higher biological efficiency, and improved calcium level in P. ostreatus. [51] investigated the effect of addition of egg shell to saw dust substrate to evaluate the growth of Flammulina velutipes. Although, the egg shell did not improve the quality of mushroom in their experiment, it significantly increases the yield of mushroom fruit body. 

CONCLUSION:

Human hairs and egg shells are considered a waste material which is commonly disposed off in landfills without any pretreatment, therefore, its accumulation causes many environmental problems. In our investigation, Pleurotus florida utilizes both the aforesaid wastes for its growth and fructification which reveals a new strategy for remediating sites contaminated by these waste. (See Original)

  

Cite this as: Siddhant, O.P. Ukaogo, Mahesh Kumar and Shyam Singh (2018): Comparison of Growth and Development of Pleurotus florida against Wastes from Animal Origin. Journal of Advances in Microbiology. 11(1): 1-8.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

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मेरी कलम 06:25  No comment