archive - liquid inoculation from China

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Thank you for your contributions. I certainly have ony a tiny fraction
of your knowledge on Pleurotus, especially P, tuberregium. However, many
other Pleurotus species are commercially cultivated here in large
tonnages, and the mushroom of choice for novices is some version of
Pleurotus for home cultivators because of its simplicity and vigorous
growth characteristics.

Liquid inoculation techniques have been developed to large industrial
scale by the Chinese. That technique fairly closely follows some of the
key observations in your comments.

The western (US) method of liquid inoculation is primarily using
high-speed blenders to finely divide a mycelia mass info fragments,
which then become multiple colonies suspended in the broth. The rapid
growth of these fragments would account for sequestration of a variety
of fertilizer pollutants, and the mass of colonies would eventually
accumulate density somewhat greater than water, accounting for
sedimentation. Some Pleurotus species are known to produce microbicidal
exudates, and others simply exude digestive enzymes to consume bacteria
as feedstock.

Mushrooms of many kinds are known to bioaccumulate high concentrations
of toxics from their environment, including heavy metals. One desires
the purest of feedstocks for substrate when cultivating mushrooms for
food and/or livestock feeds.

Most other varieties of Pleurotus are not fussy about cellulosic
feedstocks, and readily multiply on paper, waste cotton rags, various
straws and dried grasses, bagesse, presscakes, maize stalks and cobs,
brewery wastes, coir, and dried banana leaves.

The Chinese liquid inoculation technique varies from the US by employing
spore mass slurry. Currently I am doing some modest scale experiments,
using Pleurotus ostreatus, combining the Chinese and US methods, with
some variation of the paddy straw cultivation techniques of non-sterile
outdoor strawpiles. As yet I have not had favorable results, but I am
expecting a period of learning to discover what is the minimum effort
methods that has worthwhile payoffs. Since all my "failures" end up as
useful garden compost and soil amendment, even partial success is
expected to have beneficial qualities to microfarming IBS in a rural setting.

The spore mass slurry technique, of course, closely emulates nature,
where spores are cultivated in an aquaous media, and providing a
suitable substrate. Simple farmers have used adaptations of these
techniques for hundreds of years in the orient and oceania.

What they did by rote, we ought to be able to do better by knowledge.

Certain key facts are assumed in this discussion:
(1) That there is a water supply (or else there is no water clarity issue);
(2) The applications are expected to be predominantly rural;
(3) Human communities generate cellulosic mass waste products from
farming and civilization.

While P. tuberregium is not the best of the coagulants, it did perform
as well as alum, (alum reacts to acidic water to release undesirable
invisible quantities of aluminum).

Of the candidate coagulants, Pleurotus is the fastest to maturity, and
if managed can be densely cultivated in a small land footprint. The
combination of facts gives a recommendation that P. tuberregium be given
a closer look.

Sincerely, Lion Kuntz
Santa Rosa, California, USA