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Abstract: Sales of fresh mushrooms have steadily increased over the last 12 years, currently representing 54% of all mushroom sales in the United States (Anonymous, 1980). Mushroom size is becoming increasingly important in commercial mushroom culture in the U.S. Consumers of fresh mushrooms demand high quality mushrooms of uniform size. In some markets, a premium price is recieved for large mushrooms. Few research articles deal directly with factors influencing size of the commercial mushroom, Agaricus bisporus (Lange) Sing. Available information comes mainly from research not directed at size, but where effects on size were noted and reported. Throughout this paper, size will be used interchangably with average weight per mushroom, as per Bonner et al. (1956). Studies on nutritional supplements (Schisler and Sinden, 1962; Rasmussen, 1965; and Schisler, 1967) have suggested that size is not affected by supplementation. Little data were presented in support of this conclusion. Close examination of supplementation at casing data (Sinden and Schisler, 1962; Schisler, 1978, 1979) revealed that the action of fragmenting colonized compost at casing, whether or not a supplement was added, significantly increased mushroom size. To investigate a possible relationship between fragmenting colonized compost at casing and mushroom size, three mushroom cropping experiments were conducted to study the effect of fragmenting colonized compost and supplementation at casing (SAC) on size, yield, and dry weight of mushrooms.
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