or fruit wooden boxes. Most of the time, the sawdust is not reused
anditis eitherpiledupinfields for a slow degradationor evenburnt.
The use of these waste materials in a productive activity may help
to improve the regional economies of the country. In recent years
our laboratory developed techniques to adapt wild edible mushroom
species to industrial crop, as Lentinus tigrinus (Lechner and
Albertó, 2007), Agrocybe cylindrica (Uhart et al., 2008) and Polyporus
tenuiculus (Omarini et al., 2009).
The genus Gymnopilus has a large number of xylophagous
species that have not been deeply studied in Argentina yet. Twelve
species of Gymnopilus were described for Argentina (Niveiro and
Albertó, 2014). Wright and Albertó (2002) have described and
illustrated two species which grow on wood of Eucalyptus spp.
or Pinus spp.: Gymnopilus chrysopellus (Berk. et Curt.) Murr. and
Gspectabylis spectabylis (Fr.) Singer var pampeanus (Speg.) Sing. (=G.
pampeanus (Speg.) Singer). The latter in particular, which is consumed
in Argentina and Uruguay (Albertó et al., 2010) is a species
with a large pileus (10–20 cm diam.) that frequently produces clusters
with many basidiomata. During the past years we have been
collecting strains of G. pampeanus to testthem in culture. The objectives
of this work are to determine the optimal condition needed
to cultivate the edible mushroom G. pampeanus, to evaluate its
biological efficiency and to determine the biodegradation of spent
substrates.