Use of gamma irradiation for wheat sterilization as a media for cultivation of mushrooms' spawn

In recent years, respect to mushrooms, nutritious value cultivation and culture of this valuable crop has increased in our country. Since, today the nuclear techniques for preserving and improving the quality of agricultural products and foods are being the core of consideration and these techniques are being vastly utilized, therefore we can use these techniques to eliminate some of the existing problems which appear during processing of mushrooms. In this research the possibility of using 60 Co gamma irradiation to sterilize the wheat as a medium culture of mushroom mycelia was examined and during several experiments we obtained the suitable gamma irradiation dose rate (10000 Gy) and then, we made a comparison between two methods of wheat sterilization i.e. by the means of; l: autoclave and 2: gamma irradiation with respect to the quality and race of 'Pleuroturs Sajor Caju' mushrooms, mycelium growth. According to the results, at the early stage of experiments no noticeable difference between autoclave and irradiated samples was observed but gradually it was noted that on irradiated culture bed the mycelium growth was infinitely better than those on autoclave wheat. Thus in irradiated seeds grain, since the grain wheat was remained sound, the my celia were grown regularly