Viability of an ectomycorrhizal inoculum produced in a liquid medium and entrapped in a calcium alginate gel

Survival of Hebeloma crustuliniforme (Bulliard ex Fries) Quelet, grown in a liquid medium and subsequently entrapped in beads of calcium alginate, was tested under different conditions. Mycelium viability was not affected either by curing the beads for up to 22 h in 0.7 M CaCl2 or by the addition of either peat or bentonite to the alginate gel. Both peat and bentonite improved the water retention of the alginate gel, but only the incorporation of bentonite slowed down the rate at which moisture was lost by evaporation. At 4 °C the entrapped mycelium retained its viability for at least 5 months, provided that storage conditions remained humid. Partial drying of the beads reduced the effective storage time to a month. Emergence of hyphae from the beads was influenced by the presence of sterile soil extracts prepared from a podzolic soil, an acid brown earth, a mesotrophic brown earth, an eutrophic brown earth, and a rendzina. Hyphae grew out of all the beads containing peat irrespective of the type of soil extract but only grew out of those containing bentonite when they were on the mesotrophic brown earth extract. Hyphal emergence from beads containing neither peat nor bentonite appeared to be influenced by the pH of the extract, being better on those that were more acidic. Both sterile and nonsterile nursery soil supported growth of hyphae from the three types of bead, but on nonsterile soil, hyphae were not abundant and those that developed began to die off sooner than those on sterile soil.