Effects of Color Light Emitting Diode (LED) on the Mycelial Growth, Fruiting Body Production, and Antioxidant Activity of Lentinus tigrinus

Abstract

Lentinus tigrinus is an edible and medicinal mushroom and is being cultivated in fruiting bags consisting of rice straw and sawdust-based substrate. In the present work, we evaluated the influence of light emitting diode (LED) on the growth of mycelia, fruiting body production and antioxidant activities of L. tigrinus . The culture plates and fruiting bags were incubated and grown in an improvised LED chamber, and the DPPH radical scavenging activity and the total phenolic content of the harvested fruiting bodies were determined. Mycelia in blue LED recorded the widest mycelial diameter (88.83 mm) while fluorescent light showed the lowest mycelial growth (78.33 mm). However, L. tigrinus grown on the 8 parts of rice-straw and 2 parts of sawdust exposed under blue LED registered the shortest incubation period (12.33 days) and primordial initiation (17.67 days), highest number of fruiting bodies (27.67), yield (37.59 g), and biological efficiency (12.53%). Fruiting bodies harvested from the dark condition recorded the wides  t diameter of pileus and longest stipe. Moreover, among color LED, the highest phenolic content (25.04 mg gallic acid equivalent per g sample) and radical scavenging activity (61.29%) were noted in those grown under blue and red LEDs, respectively.