Cultural Studies of Mycelia of Volvariella volvacea, Pleurotus tuber-regium and Pleurotus sajor-caju on Different Culture Media

Various agar culture media were investigated for culturing the mycelia of Pie urotus. sq/or caju, P. tuber-re glum and V voivacea edible mushrooms. The study was conducted at Cross River University of Technology, Calabar Campus, Nigeria. Selected mushroom species were cultured to source for low input, cheap and other method of growing active mycelia, for the production of viable mushroom spawn (seeds). The results revealed that P. sajor caju had the highest mycelia growth (7.8 cm) on rice bran/soil culture media while P. tuber-regium had the highest mycelia growth (5.8 cm) on cassava peels/soil culture media. V. voivacea had the highest mycelia growth (7.1 cm) on palm fibre culture medium. The least mycelia growth (1.5-4.4 cm) was observed on potato dextrose agar culture media and yeast agar culture media. Therefore natural supernatant extracts culture media stimulated higher mycelia growth than synthetic agar culture media employed in this study. Thus it is recommended that P. sajor caju, P. tuber-ragium and Vvoivacea mycelium can be grown culturally on rice bran/soil, cassava peels/soil and palm fibre culture media respectively.