Short Communication: Cultivation of Straw Mushroom Volvariella volvacea using Banana Biomass Waste

In Malaysia, commercial cultivation of Volvariella volvacea mushroom started in the year of 2014. At the beginning, rice straw biomass was used as a growth media. However, the application of rice straw biomass has several disadvantages such as low availability throughout the country, seasonal, low yield, and complex media preparation since it requires cutting and soaking in lime solution. In recent years, oil palm empty fruit bunch (EFB) was found to give higher mushroom yield than that of a rice straw. The process of media preparation using EFB is simpler without the need of any size modification. EFB is also abundant as waste from palm oil mills, and it could be obtained at relatively low cost all year round. Besides rice straw and EFB, application of other biomass such as dry banana leaf which was proven to be successful in the Philippines and Ghana, but has yet been reported in Malaysia's public domains. This study was conducted to evaluate the feasibility of V. volvacea mushroom cultivation using banana biomass waste. The survival of the V. volvacea mushrooms was studied by cultivation using bed and basket methods in the field. The results showed that the bed planting method yielded higher fresh mushrooms than the basket method. An average of 2.5 kg fresh mushrooms was obtained from each media bed. Each media bed was built with 24 kg of dried banana leaf therefore, the Biological Conversion Efficiency (BCE) of this method was 10.4%. For basket method, the BCE was significantly lower at 8.3% (1.0 kg fresh mushroom/12 kg media). Although many of the study parameters could be optimized in the future, this study has successfully garnered baseline data as reference framework for the integrative cultivation of V. volvacea mushrooms with banana crop. Using the permaculture concept, biomass waste from banana plantation can be sustainably applied to plant V. volvacea mushrooms for new income generation.