How to identify the quality of oyster mushroom strains?
The quality of oyster mushroom strains is the key to affecting yield. Excellent Pleurotus ostreatus strains, with strong mycelium and disease resistance, can be widely adapted to a variety of alternative cultivation materials, have early fruiting, good mushroom shape and high yield. When purchasing strains, you should not only choose varieties with fast mycelium growth, strong stress resistance, early fruiting, high yield, and strong fragrance. You should also understand the requirements of this strain on temperature, nutrition, oxygen, humidity, pH and other conditions, as a reference for cultivation and management. In addition, varieties with different temperature types should be used in different cultivation seasons. If the temperature type of the variety does not match the cultivation season, it will seriously affect the yield and quality of oyster mushrooms, and even lead to a failed harvest. The characteristics of the good and bad strains of Pleurotus ostreatus are now introduced as follows:
1. Characteristics of high-quality strains
(1) From the appearance, the mycelium in the bag is all cotton-wool white, thick and dense, evenly distributed, with no variegated mycelium, and the front end is neat and develops in a fan shape.
(2) The cottonseed hull culture material with mycelium decomposed turns into yellowish brown, and the sawdust culture material turns into white to light yellow. When the material is eaten to the end, it has the aroma of rotten wood.
(3) The strains have the special aroma of oyster mushrooms and are elastic when pressed with hands on the culture medium; they are not brittle when broken. A small number of small mulberry-shaped buds have just been formed, and the bacterial age is 25 to 40 days, which is an excellent strain.
2. Characteristics of inferior strains
(1) The mycelium grows slowly and weakly, unevenly, and does not spread downwards, or although the mycelium grows full of the bag, the upper part of the bag recedes, leaving only brown culture material.
(2) The mycelium turns yellow, a layer of bacterial film (bacterial integument) is produced on the surface, and the growth is slow, indicating that the bacteria have degenerated.
(3) After the hyphae fill the bag, they become sparse or unevenly developed in bundles, and thick linear hyphae cords appear on the upper part.
(4) Brown liquid appears in the mushroom bag, which is a sign of aging. Although mushrooms can sometimes be produced, the yield is very low and difficult to manage. Any variegated spots, dark white, light yellow round or irregular granular objects, or inhibition lines of different hyphae that appear within the bacterial species are infected with miscellaneous bacteria and should be discarded immediately.