article · Horticulturae
Spent mushroom substrate from Shiitake cultivation often ends up as agricultural waste, contributing to environmental concerns. This study examines anaerobic biotransformation of this spent substrate into biogas, alongside the use of the resulting digestate slurry as fertiliser for tomato crops. Researchers tested four mixtures combining spent substrate with cow dung inoculum at ratios of zero, 25, 50, and 75 percent. The 50 percent substrate treatment yielded the highest biogas volume of 8,834 millilitres and a methane content of 61 percent, while achieving the greatest reduction in slurry parameters. When applied at a 10 percent loading rate, digestate from this treatment significantly improved tomato seed germination, seedling and plant height, chlorophyll levels, overall fruit yield, and secondary metabolite contents including flavonoids, phenolics, and tannins.
Mushroom cultivation generates substantial waste that typically poses an environmental challenge and adds to agricultural greenhouse gas emissions. Converting spent Shiitake substrate into both biogas and rich organic fertiliser provides a dual-benefit circular economy approach. It creates renewable energy while replacing or supplementing chemical fertilisers, offering a cleaner production pathway for commercial growers and reducing the overall carbon footprint of food production.
This work indicates potential applications in agricultural waste management, renewable energy generation, and organic crop fertilisation. Intended users include mushroom producers, biogas operators, and horticultural growers seeking integrated waste upcycling systems. The study demonstrates applied experimental testing at the laboratory and trial-crop level, showing clear technical viability. However, commercial adoption will require further pilot testing to scale up anaerobic digester volumes and evaluate crop responses under diverse field conditions.
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Agro-wastes, such as crop residues, leaf litter, and sawdust, are major contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions, and consequently a major concern for climate change. Nowadays, mushroom cultivation has appeared as an emerging agribusiness that helps in the sustainable management of agro-wastes. However, partial utilization of agro-wastes by mushrooms results in the generation of a significant quantity of spent mushroom substrates (SMS) that have continued to become an environmental problem. In particular, Shiitake (Lentinula edodes Berk.) mushrooms can be grown on different types of agro-wastes and also generate a considerable amount of SMS. Therefore, this study investigates the biotransformation of SMS obtained after Shiitake mushroom cultivation into biogas and attendant utilization of slurry digestate (SD) in tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) crop fertilization. Biogas production experiments were conducted anaerobically using four treatments of SMS, i.e., 0% (control), 25, 50, and 75% inoculated with a proportional amount of cow dung (CD) as inoculum. The results on biogas production revealed that SMS 50% treatment yielded the highest biogas volume (8834 mL or 11.93 mL/g of organic carbon) and methane contents (61%) along with maximum reduction of physicochemical and proximate parameters of slurry. Furthermore, the biogas digestate from 50% treatment further helped to increase the seed germination (93.25%), seedling length (9.2 cm), seedling root length (4.19 cm), plant height (53.10 cm), chlorophyll content (3.38 mg/g), total yield (1.86 kg/plant), flavonoids (5.06 mg/g), phenolics (2.78 mg/g), and tannin (3.40 mg/g) contents of tomato significantly (p < 0.05) in the 10% loading rate. The findings of this study suggest sustainable upcycling of SMS inspired by a circular economy approach through synergistic production of bioenergy and secondary fruit crops, which could potentially contribute to minimize the carbon footprints of the mushroom production sector.
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DOI: 10.3390/horticulturae8060479
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