Potential of Spent Mushroom Substrate for Bioremediation Purposes

? Several approaches involving the use of spent mushroom substrate (SMS) for bioremediation purposes warrant further investigation. SMS has important potential for the biological treatment of contaminated soils in situ and offers an attractive technology for the decontamination of land sites used for the disposal of hazardous wastes. Development of the bioremediation potential of SMS, coupled with the well-documented environmental benefits of SMS (e.g. provision of plant nutrients, neutralization of soil acidity, improvement of water quality), should serve to enhance the value of SMS as an additional source of revenue to the mushroom grower. large scale bioremediation system involves the seeding of contaminated sites with microbial inoculants. Apart from cost considerations (i.e. they must be cheap to produce to have any practical value), bioremediation inoculants should be selected for their degradative capacity (ability to totally mineralise the contaminant, broad substrate specifity). The stability of that capacity and their survival properties under the conditions that prevail at the contaminated site also are important, and they should not possess any undesirable characteristics such as pathogenicity and allergenicity.