Determination of the concentration of essential elements in pleurotus ostreatus cultivated on valisneria arthiopica as a supplementary substrate to sawdust using instrumental neutron activation analyses

Abstract

Mushrooms are excellent nutritional and medicinal sources in the environment. This study has sought to conduct an analysis of the concentration of the essential elements in the mushroom sample that was cultivated on three supplementary substrate compositions (25% Vallisneria aethiopica and 75% Tripochton scleroxylon, 50% Vallisneria aethiopica and 50% Tripochton scleroxylon and 75% Vallisneria aethiopica and 25% Tripochton scleroxylon) using Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA) at the Ghana Research Reactor-1 facility(GHARR-1). The concentrations of the elements were detected in Pleurotus ostreatus cultivated on three different percentage substrate compositions of a mixture of Vallisneria aethiopica and Triplochiton scleroxylon. The mixture of 50% Vallisneria aethiopica and 50% Tripochton scleroxylon was best for most of the cultivation of oyster mushrooms since most of the elements detected in the samples attained the highest concentration in this substrate. The validity of the INAA technique for determination essential elements was checked by analyses of SRM 1566b (Oyster tisue) and Peach leaves 1547, respectively. The mean concentrations of the nutritional elements (Al, Cs, Ca, Cu, Cr, Cl, Zn, Br, Hg, Th, Fe, K, Mg, Mn, Na and V) were determined in mushrooms cultivated on three different substrate mixtures. © Maxwell Scientific Organization, 2011.