EFFICACY OF DIFFERENT WEEDS an‎d AGRICULTURAL SUBSTRATES FOR CULTIVATION OF PLEUROTUS OSTREATUS (JACQ. FR.

Oyster mushrooms are fleshy edible fungi which acquirehuge importance due to their nutritional and medicinal properties. These mushrooms are cultivated upon various substrates which directly affect the yield and time taken to reach the maturity. So the present experiment was designed to study different weeds, agricultural wastes and their mixtures for efficacy regarding time taken to achieve 100% mycelial growth and yield attributes. Our results illustrated that cotton wasteshowed better performance as substrate as ittook minimum days i.e. 20.5 followed by Chenopodium albumand mixture of cotton waste + Chenopodium albumwhich relativelytaken 24.5 days to reach maximum growth level. Thesesubstrates also provided better yield as compared to all other substrates by recording 650.36, 583.41 and 530.43 grams yield respectively. The performance of all other substrates was below power.Hence we conclude that Chenopodium albumanonymously or mixture of particular weed and cotton wastecan be utilized for efficient cultivation of mushrooms.