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Abstract: The yield of the highly productive strains of cultivated mushroom, Agaricus bisporus, may gradually or suddenly reduce (HELTAY and LATKOCZKY, 1959; PENG and Wu, 1972). The drastic changes in the fruiting capacity have been due to one of many causes. It appears that reliable spawn is an essential to the crop. Thus, the vast studies in the area of making mushroom spawn have been concerned (KLIGMAN, 1943; KNEEBONE, 1967; LAMBERT, 1959; STOLLER, 1954, 1962). There are many variables in spawn, some genetic and others due to environmental factors (KNEEBONE, 1967). Genetic analysis has revealed the basic features of the life cycle and established the possibility of interstrain breeding (MILLER, 1971; RAPER and RAPER, 1972). Although the vegetative mycelium maintained by periodic transfer of the stock cultures to fresh media has demonstrated a high degree of stability( KLIGMAN, 1943; KNEEBONE, 1967; LAMBERT, 1959), occasionally serious and detrimental genetic and/ or physiological changes take place during the propagation of spawn that exert on the diverse characters of colony and mycelium (HUANG, 1969; KLIGMAN, 1942, 1943; LAMBERT, 1959; PENG and Wu, 1972). In submerged culture, peculiarities of the mycelium are also observed with culture age (IVANOICH, 1967; PENG and Wu, 1972; TOREV, 1967). Age indicates the duration of time that a cell, tissue, or organism has existed as a distinct entity (GOTTLIEB and van ETTEN, 1966). Therefore, we interpret these findings to be a manifestation of biological ageing, senescence. Since the yield of cultivated mushroom is known to be higher with fresh spawn (HELTAY and BARBER, 1959; STOLLER, 1962), study on the ageing of spawn should be of value as a basis for further investigation of making mushroom spawn. With cultivated mushroom, investigation of changes in cellular composition, as a guide to metabolic activity of mycelial vegetative stage, has rarely been made. Most studies on the chemical composition of mushroom have been concerned with fruiting stage. Prior to biochemical examination of the commercial spawn, it is desirable to conduct a test by growing the mushroom mycelium on simple media to see whether the biological ageing is typically associated with mushroom. In the present investigation, the method of growing mycelium on filter paper was adopted since the physical nature of the media was supposed to resemble that of compost (STYER, 1930). This paper describes the changes in cellular composition of mushroom mycelium with age in order to throw light on the ageing of spawn. The importance of such study is readily seen when it becomes possible to measure the spawn quality in biochemical terms.
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