Evaluation of agricultural wastes and food supplements usage on growth characteristics of Pleurotus ostreatus

As agricultural wastes are easily accessible and quite free sources, re-use of them could be considered as a break through in production management, especially if it sustains the production efficiency as standard materials do. In this study, we evaluated combination usage of substrates including wood chips, boll, Sugar Beet Pellet Pulp (SBPP) and palm fiber along with wheat bran, rice bran, soya cake powder, Soya Cake Powder + Rice Bran (SCPRB) and carrot pulp as supplements. Substrates with no supplement were regarded as control groups. Results revealed that boll, SBPP and palm fiber, which could be abundantly in Iran, had better growth period, fruiting body weight, yield and biological efficiency than wood chips. Moreover, SCRBP had the highest yield, biological efficiency and fruiting body weight among all substrates. We also assessed combination effects of substrates and complements. The least growth period (30.3 d) belonged to sugar beet pulp enriched with soya cake powder. The lowest fruiting body weight (12.4 g) was produced in boll substrate with no supplement, though maximum fruiting body number (34.3) belonged to this group. The highest fruiting body weight (41.5 g) was achieved when the enriched palm fiber by rice bran supplement was used. In addition, the highest yield and biological efficiency was found on boll substrate enriched with a mixture of soya cake powder and rice bran supplements (794.3 and 158.9 g, respectively).