Fungal Foam: Effect of Different Substrates on the Growth Performance, Mechanical, Physical and Biodegradability Properties

In the last few years, mushrooms have been widely applied in material science for the purpose of creating new materials that have functionality based on biological resources. Biomass can be defined as the biological materials which can be used as fuel and the use of bio-mass especially the agricultural residues is a sustainable and intelligent method because these wastes are readily available. This research focuses on the growth of grey oyster mushroom ( Pleurotus sajor-caju ) on agricultural wastes including sugarcane bagasse and rice husk with a view of producing fungal foams. These foams were characterised by SEM, FTIR, mechanical properties by texture analyzer and biodegradation by the soil burial method. The study showed that the low-cost substrate such as sugarcane bagasse was the best among all the used substrates in terms of growth of the mushroom at 0. This rate was estimated to be 0.3663 cm/day by using linear regression analysis. SEM images showed that sugarcane bagasse foam has a long and extensive hyphal network, which is related with the excellent mechanical characteristic. The biodegradability tests involved the comparison of the rate at which the fungal foams decomposed in the compost soil, and it was shown that both types of fungal foams decomposed effectively in the compost soil and as such could be potential environmentally friendly foams.