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Abstract: The water activity or equilibrium relative humidity of imported grains has been conveniently measured by Conway diffusion units (Landrock and Procter, 1951) to define boundary moisture under a certain relative humidity for storage in Taiwan (Wang, Chen, Liu and Lu, 1980). The water activity (or Aw) of foods has been defined as 1/100 of the relative humidity equilibrated for a given food moisture (Labuza, 1968). The critical Aw for fungal growth during grains storage is around 0.80 (Wang, Chen, Liu and Lu, 1980) while that of Basidiomycetes is 0.95 but when Aw less than 0.6, microbial growth will be inhibited (Brown, 1976). Then, we have tried to make a kind of dehydrated spawn having Aw of not more than 0.8. In the previous study, when the grain spawns of Agaricus bisporus were incubated at 22°C in a chamber of Aw 0.4 or 0.6, those in the chamber of Aw 0.4, showed remarked decrease in mycelial mass of the spawns measured by cell ATP (Chu and Wang, 1977). Therefore, a programmed slow dehydration system was proposed. However, it was found that there was no significant decrease in Aw of dehydrated spawns during slow dehydration in the present study.
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