Spent mushroom compost (SMC) substrates are commonly used as growth media for greenhouse crops and horticulture production. This study aimed to investigate the responses of physiochemical soil properties, enzyme activities, microbial community compositions different cultivation durations SMC treatments on tomatoes. The experiment included following treatments: substrate surrounding after planti...

Application of organic amendments to soil is commonplace in domestic gardening. However, a vast array materials could be labelled as ‘compost’ by retailers and suppliers. We investigated six different currently used, or available for use, horticulture: composted bark, bracken, spent mushroom compost, horse manure, garden waste compost (at two application rates), peat. Using controlled field exp...

Edible mushrooms are renowned for their nutritional and medicinal properties and are thus of considerable commercial importance. Mushroom production depends on the chemical composition of the basic substrates and additional supplements employed in the compost as well as on the method of composting. In order to minimise the cost of mushroom production, considerable interest has been shown in the...

Biosphere is a store house of various microorganisms that may be employed to isolate and exploit microbes for environmental, pharmaceutical, agricultural and industrial applications. There is restricted data regarding the structure and dynamics of microbial communities in several ecosystems because only a little fraction of microbial diversity is accessible by culture methods. Owing to limitati...

Composts prepared from a variety of feedstocks were tested for their ability to suppress seedling and root diseases of creeping bentgrass caused by Pythium graminicola. Among the most suppressive materials in laboratory experiments were different batches of a brewery sludge compost and a biosolids compost from Endicott, N.Y. Batches of these composts that were initially not suppressive to Pythi...

Three compost formulations, consisting of two varieties of Cynodom dactylon (L.) Pers. (Coast-cross and Tyfton) and oat (Avena sativa) straw were tested for the cultivation of A. bisporus strains ABI-01/01, ABI-04/02, ABI-05/03, and ABI-06/04. A completely randomized experimental design in a factorial scheme was adopted, with 12 treatments (4 A. bisporus strains × 3 types of compost) and 8 repl...