Casing soils selection for cultivation of common mushroom Agaricus bisporus (J. E. Lange) Imbach, 1946

Button mushroom ( Agaricus bisporus (Lange) Imbach) is grown in many countries of the world in production basis more than 4 mln. tons throughout the world. In recent years cultivation of this mushroom is being applied in Uzbekistan too. In cultivation of button mushroom casing soil has a great importance. Because it causes possibilities of aeration, keeping water in soil and forming substrate structure. Fruit bodies of button mushroom are also formed there. While cultivating fruit body, casing soil on peat basis is regarded as the best suitable one. But there are no peat resources in Uzbekistan. And therefore it is rather difficult to find relevant casing soil content for button mushroom cultivation. This article shows experiment results on testing substrates with different components that can substitute peat that is casing soil for covering compost in Agaricus bisporus (Lange) Imbach cultivation. In the experiment typical sierozem, biohumus, decomposed manure, sawdust, different proportion of chalk contents were used as casing soil. During the investigation the variant with proportion 5,5:2:2:0,5 from typical sierozem+decomposed manure+biohumus+chalk content was the most efficacious. Comparing to control variant its productivity was 19,5% and 25% higher, button mushroom fruit bodies productivity made 9,8 kg/m2 and 10,5 kg/m2.