Possibility of safe, easy and lower cost substrate disinfection with chlorine dioxide in Hypsizygus ulmarius cultivation

The mushroom Hypsizygus ulmarius exhibits economic, biological and medicinal benefits. The aim of this research was to advance solutions with low cost, simple disinfection procedures that are technically applicable for the cultivation of the H. ulmarius. In the study, the H. ulmarius growing substrates was treated chlorine dioxide (ClO2) alone, fungicide alone and ClO2 combinated with a fungicide or stream sterilization and measured the cultivation parameters. Moreover, the effect of these treatments on the nutritional content of H. ulmarius was also evaluated. The results reveal that, among the ten experimental tested treatments, the most efficient method was the disinfection by soaking in 5 ppm of ClO2 solution for 40 min was the most efficient method. This treatment prevented substrate contamination by harmful microorganisms. It also permitted a shorter cultivation cycle from inoculation to the first flush (34.1 +/- 0.6 days) and enhanced the mushroom yield and biological efficiency (304.8 +/- 12.3 gkg- 1 and 89.7 +/- 3.6%, respectively). The nutritional analysis indicated that H. ulmarius exhibited 13.5 +/- 0.1-18.7 +/- 0.1 g100 g-1 of protein, 7.6 +/- 0.3-10.3 +/- 0.1 g 100 g-1 of ash, 2.6 +/- 0.2-4.3 +/- 0.3 g100 g-1 of fat, 69.6 +/- 0.6-73.5 +/- 0.2 g 100 g-1 of total carbonhydrates, and 372.2 +/- 0.8-391.1 kcal 100 g-1 of energy (on a dry weight basis). The findings of this study suggest that, disinfection with ClO2, is a convenient and affordable method, that can replace autoclave sterilization in preparing the growing substrates in H. ulmarius cultivation.