The Pennsylvania mushroom industry, the nation's leading producer of commercial button mushrooms, uses more than 500,000 tons of compost each year. The growth medium is composed of a mixture of straw, hay, and horse and other manures, and is composted before use.

"The compost is used for about two months and then discarded," says Dr. Patrick G. Hatcher, director of Penn State's Center for Environmental Chemistry and Geochemistry and professor of fuel science and geosciences and chemistry. "The spent mushroom substrate must be weathered for two years before it can be reused."

The mushroom industry has identified potential uses for this substrate as a soil amendment or potting media, in mine reclamation and wetland establishment. Other uses may be possible, but not much is known about the weathering of the spent substrate or the leachate that drains from the compost when it is spread over a field to weather.

Hatcher; Dr. C. Peter Romaine, associate professor of plant pathology; Dr. Jon Chorover, assistant professor of environmental soil chemistry; and Dr. Richard H. Fox, professor of soil science, will analyze and characterize the weathering compost over a three-year time span.

This joint College of Agricultural Sciences and College of Earth and Mineral Science project is sponsored by MIFBAR, Mushroom Industry Farmer-Based Applied Research project, a legislative initiative to increase the use of mushroom soil. The research is funded at $186,000 for the first year.

The project will be carried out on farm land owned by Vincent Santucci, operator of Elite Mushrooms in Avondale, Pa. A series of lysimeters -- containers that will catch the liquid that leaches out of the substrate -- were built at the surface, just below
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Contact: A'ndrea Elyse Messer
aem1@psu.edu
814-865-9481
Penn State
12-Aug-1997