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.