Growth, Nutrient Uptake, and Foliar Gas Exchange in Pepper Cultured with Un-composted Fresh Spent Mushroom Residue

Abstract

Spent mushroom substrate (SMS) can be used as the component of growing medium for the culture of crop plants. Fresh SMS may have the potential as an alternative to peat to raise horticultural plants. In this study, five container media characterized by the proportions of SMS to commercial peat in 0% (control), 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% were used to raise pepper (Capsicum annum L.) plants. Initial SMS was found to have low available nitrogen (N) content (<20 mg kg-1) but moderate extractable phosphorus (P) content (900 mg kg-1). In the second month photosynthetic rate was found to decline in the 75% treatment. At harvest in the third month, plants in the 100% treatment nearly died out. The 25% treatment resulted in the highest height (19 cm) and diameter growth (0.3 cm), shoot (0.6 g) and root biomass accumulation (0.13 g), fruit weight (3 g), and shoot carbohydrate content (98 mg g-1), but lowest foliar acid phosphatase activity (30 µg NPP g-1 FW min-1). With the increase of SMS proportion in the substrate, the medium pH and electrical conductance (EC) increased with the decrease of foliar size. The available N and P contents in the substrates showed contrasting relationship with N and P contents in pepper plants. Therefore, fresh SMS cannot be directly used as the substrate for the culture of pepper plants. According to our findings fresh SMS was recommended to be mixed in the proportion of 25% with commercial peat for the culture of horticultural plants.

Using morphological attributes for the fast assessment of nutritional responses of Buddhist pine (Podocarpus macrophyllus [Thunb.] D. Don) seedlings to exponential fertilization

“…Zhu et al . [19] found a negative relationship between GCI and foliar N concentration in pepper plants. These contradictions probably existed because we determined the nutrient concentrations in the shoot part (leaves + stem) instead of in the leaves, but GCI is a parameter measured in leaves.…”

“…The development of digital image analysis techniques has enabled the precise evaluation of nutrient concentration by scanning leaf traits in crop plants [18,19]. This technique has not yet been used on tree species for the purpose of forecasting inherent nutrient status.…”

Light spectra modify nitrogen assimilation and nitrogen content inQuercus variabilisBlume seedling components: A bioassay with15N pulses

“…The leaf green index (GI) can be directly read from the background data of the histogram [42][43][44]. Leaf area can be calculated as the total pixels of the histogram divided by the square of the dpi [43][44][45]. Scanned leaves were oven-dried at 65 °C to constant weight and measured for the biomass of a single leaf.…”

The use of un-composted spent mushroom residue as a replacement of peat in substrates for Gossypium herbaceum and Talinum paniculatum

“…However, the full replacement of peat by SMR compost has not been applicable due to high pH and electrical conductance (EC) (Szmidt and Chong, 1995;Gonani et al, 2011). With SMR addition, it was found that the EC value up to the 2.3 dS m -1 would result in stress on plant growth (Zhu et al, 2019). Even the deep compost cannot fully eliminate these negative impacts; hence only a small part of peats can be replaced by SMR in current growing media (Wei et al, 2020a;Wei et al, 2020b;Wei et al, 2020c).…”

“…Even the deep compost cannot fully eliminate these negative impacts; hence only a small part of peats can be replaced by SMR in current growing media (Wei et al, 2020a;Wei et al, 2020b;Wei et al, 2020c). Zhu et al (2019) put forward that SMR can be directly used as un-composted substrates under the condition of partly replacing peats in the growing media for cultivation of pepper (Capsicum annum L.) seedlings. The growing media with a quarter of fresh SMR was also successfully used for the cultivation of tree (Pinus koraiensis) (Wei et al, 2020a) and shrub (Aralia elata) (Wei et al, 2020b) plants that have commercial values.…”