March 12, Inoculation Day

Today, I spent most of the time inoculating grain bags with the mushrooms for the experiment with different oyster species.  Sadly, we are not going to be able to use Pleurotus djamor because the mushroom did not spawn enough on the plate.  You can see this on the picture below.  The very left plate is the normal Pleurotus ostreatus that we have been using for the other experiments.  In the middle is Pleurotus citrinopileatus which did not spread as much as P. ostreatus but enough for us to continue the experiment. The very right plate is P. djamor which clearly did not grow on the plate.

Inoculating the grain bags was another good review of aseptic techniques.  Furthermore, since I had only inoculated grain bags with Courtney before, it was a good experience to be doing it with Sarah.  I was able to see more ways of handling contamination.  This is good for me because it allows me to pick and choose methods that work best for me.

Over break, I am to finish the conclusion for the light vs. dark experiment.  The average of the total wet weight (the weight from the first flush added to the second flush) was greater for the light set than the dark set, not as we had predicted.  For both sets, the second flush yielded smaller oysters.  I don't believe much error came from contamination, as only three blocks were contaminated and two of those were from the light set.