Effect of Pleurotus florida on paddy straw digestibility and biogas production
Biogas production from paddy straw offers a great potential as an alternative to fossilfuels. But, lignin and silica adversely affect the efficient utilization of paddy straw. Henceforth, the potential of biological pretreatment of paddy straw by a lignocellulolytic fungus, Pleurotus florida was investigated whereby the straw was inoculated with different spore concentrations of Pleurotus florida for different durations. Biodegradability of paddy straw was determined at different incubation periods and the selected pretreatment was further used for biogas production studies. An incubation period of 30 days was found to be the optimum pretreatment period in enhancing paddy straw digestibility with 19.3% increase in cellulose and 55.1% decrease in lignin. The biologically degraded paddy straw resulted in 15.4% increase in biogas production than that of the untreated paddy straw. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/ijls.v6i1.5550