© 2015 PP House Bioconversion of Low Quality Lignocellulosic Agricultural waste into Edible Protein by Pleurotus djamor (Rumph) Boedijn Praneet Chauhan and Dharmesh Gupta * Dept. of Plant Pathology, Dr Yashwant Singh Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry, Nauni, Solan, H.P. (173 230), India Abstract Article History Correspondence to Keywords Manuscript No. AR793 Received in 26 th May, 2014 Received in revised form 14 th December, 2014 Accepted in fnal form 9 th January, 2015 The experiments were carried out at the Mushroom Research Laboratory, Department of Plant Pathology, Dr. YS Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry, Nauni, Solan (H.P.), India during 2010-2012. The culture of Pleurotus djamor was procured from Directorate of Mushroom Research, Solan and was maintained on PDA medium. Eight different substrates viz., wheat straw, corn cobs, lantana twigs, rice straw, poplar leaves, parthenium leaves, sugarcane bagasse, saw dust alone or wheat straw in combination with saw dust, wheat bran, cotton seed meal, urea, CAN, waste paper, lantana twigs and corn cobs were evaluated for the yield performance and biological effciency (BE) of P. djamor. Among the various substrates Lantana twigs was found highly suitable with 75.23% BE for the cultivation of Pink oyster mushroom (Pleurotus djamor). Combination of wheat straw+wheat bran (9:1) and wheat straw+cotton seed meal (9:1) gave better yield with biological effciency of 78.60% and 78.56%, respectively. * E-mail: dkguhf@rediffmail.com Pleurotus djamor, substrates, biological effciency, supplements, spawn run 1. Introduction A huge amount of lignocellulosic agricultural crop residues and agro-industrial by-products are annually generated, rich in organic compounds that are worthy of being recovered and transformed. Mushroom cultivation presents a worldwide expanded and economically important biotechnological industry that uses effcient solid-state-fermentation process of food protein recovery from lignocellulosic materials. On the surface of our planet, around 200 billion tons year -1 of organic matter are produced through the photosynthetic process (Zhang, 2008). However, majority of this organic matter is not directly edible by humans and animals and, in many cases, becomes a source of environmental problem. Moreover, today’s society, in which there is a great demand for appropriate nutritional standards, is characterized by rising costs and often decreasing availability of raw materials together with much concern about environmental pollution (Laufenberg et al., 2003). Consequently, there is a considerable emphasis on recovery, recycling and upgrading of wastes. It is worth mentioning that only crop residues production is estimated to be about 4 billion tons per year, 75% originating from cereals (Lal, 2008). Nevertheless, residues such us cereals straw, corn cobs, cotton stalks, various grasses and reed stems, maize and sorghum stover, sugarcane bagasse, corn husks, cottonseed and sunfower seed hulls, peanut shells, rice husks, waste paper, wood sawdust and chips, are some examples of residues and by-products that can be recovered and upgraded to higher value and useful products by chemical or biological processes (Wang, 1999; Fan et al., 2000; Webb et al., 2004). In fact, the chemical properties of such lignocellulosic agricultural residues make them a substrate of enormous biotechnological value. They can be converted by solid state fermentation (SSF) into various different value-added products including mushrooms. Commercial mushroom production, carried out in a large or small scale, is an effcient and relatively short biological process of food protein recovery from negative value lignocellulosic materials, utilizing the degrading capabilities of mushroom fungi . Pleurotus spp. commonly known as oyster mushroom ranked third in the world mushroom production. Cultivation of the oyster mushroom has increased greatly throughout the world during the last few decades. Its popularity has been increasing due to its ease of cultivation, high yield potential and high nutritional and medicinal value. Furthermore, the abundant International Journal of Bio-resource and Stress Management 2015, 6(1):135-139 135 Short Research Article DOI: 10.5958/0976-4038.2015.00029.9