The formulation of grass-based substrate could generate positive impacts on shiitake production

• Grant number: 24/05573-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: August 01, 2024
• End date: July 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Microbiology
• Principal Investigator: Diego Cunha Zied
• Grantee: Caio dos Santos Corlatti
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Agrárias e Tecnológicas. Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Dracena. Dracena , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The mushroom Lentinula edodes, popularly known as shiitake, has attracted the attention of several researchers due to its nutritional and medicinal properties. Shiitake thrives in materials rich in lignin and can be cultivated in sawdust, supplemented with wheat bran, rice, and/or corn to correct the C/N ratio. However, acquiring sawdust has become a major challenge as it comes from a raw material that takes approximately 7 years to be cut/obtained. In this sense, replacing part of the sawdust with grasses would bring several environmental and economic advantages. But the question remains, from an agronomic standpoint, is this feasible? Therefore, the aim of this project is to evaluate the production performance with this peculiarity in substrate formulation, ensuring that, besides the greater ease in obtaining raw material for fungus cultivation, there may also be other positive factors to be observed and recorded as the experiment progresses, ultimately ensuring that producers are aware of the positive effects of using grasses, thus benefiting society as a whole by making management techniques more sustainable and efficient, if it proves to be a good alternative production method.Two experiments will be conducted, each with a lineage (LED 19/02 and LED 22/01). Productivity, biological efficiency, average mass and number of mushrooms, earliness, time to the first flush, production rate, as well as pH levels, electrical conductivity (EC), moisture, and C/N ratio of substrates will be evaluated.The results will be subjected to analysis of variance and the means compared by Tukey's test, at the 5% significance level.