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Abstract: Approximately 2.5 million tons of rice straw and a half million tons of rice hulls are produced in Taiwan each year. Out of the straw tonnage 0.25 million tons is used in mushroom cultivation for making compost and insulating bamboo houses. Rice hulls have also been searched for use as mushroom substrates (Wang, Yuan and Miles, 1979) and for gasification (C.C. Chen, 1980). These wastes have a common characteristic, low bulk density, which makes transportation difficult and uneconomical. Straw is easy to be composted, but rice hulls are not because of their having a very low water holding capacity (Wang, Yuan and Miles,1979). Therefore, straw is a better resource for mushroom cultivation, while rice hulls may be suitable for insulation of bamboo houses. For mushroom cultivation, a solid state fermentation has the advantage of easily or appropriately separating the product, popular mushrooms, from semi-solid cellulosic agricultural; wastes such as straw. In Taiwan,, an intermediate technology of coranercial mushroom (Agaricus bisporus) cultivation has been introduced since 1968. Mushroom are cultivated in plastic-covered straw houses, which are able to get compost pasteurized or to have composting made indoor by peak heating with the supplement of adequate steaming (Luh,1964;Huang,1978; Ho and Han, 1978). The current methods of mushroom cultivation in Taiwan give only one crop a year. The energy input includes materials and operative labor. Labor and fuels are costly. Therefore, we have chosen to calculate the recovery ratio (output/input) in the term of energy ratio to supplement the consideration of cost in the term of currency.
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