LAUSR

Mushroom production has been considered as one of the microbial biotechnologies which will improve the lively hood of the community as it is a recycle processes which produces nutritionally rich and medicinally useful mushroom biomass from low cost and no cost organic by products. The main objective of this study was to evaluate millet straw (Elusine coracana) with the supplement of cotton seed waste for the production of oyster mushroom. The oyster mushroom culture was prepared on potato dextrose agar. The spawn was developed on yellow color sorghum grain. The sterilized substrate was inoculated with 10% on dry / wet basis of substrate/spawn. The experiment was laid in a completely Randomized Design (CRD) with three replications involving a 10x3 factorial arrangement for millet straw and cotton seed waste mix ratio. The inoculated bags were placed in the dark room for vegetative growth and in the mushroom production house from January 2020 to April 2020 in the main campus of Ambo University. The fastest complete mycelia colonization was recorded from T10 10 days, while the slowest mycelia colonization was recorded on T1 (20 days). The fastest primordial formation was observed on T7 (14 days) while, T1 (24 days) showed slowest primordial formation. The fastest first harvest was recorded from T2 (16 days) while, the slowest first harvest was from T1 (29 days). The highest numbers of fruiting body was recorded from T4 (80) while the least number of fruiting body was from T1 (50). The highest total biomass was recorded from T3 (1618 gm) while the least total biomass was from T1 (871 gm). In this study, the highest biological efficiency was recorded from T3 (302.4%) while, the least biological efficiency was from T1 (138.25%). All the treatments investigated in this, gave the highest yield, total biomass and highest biological efficiency more than those reported in the literature with other substrates so, this will open up the new oyster mushroom substrate mixture based on finger millet could be used for pilot, farm or at industrial scale production.