Pleurotus Ostreatus was cultured on a rye grain substrate for 21 days. This substrate was comprised of 75% rye grain and 24% perlite by dry weight. The substrate was buffered with 1% gypsum by weight and contained 63% water by weight. RyeGrain was obtained from The Honest Weight food CO-OP in Albany, N.Y. Perlite and gypsum were obtained from The Home Depot, located in Latham, N.Y. City water, from the municipality of Troy, N.Y., with a pH of 7, was used to wet the material. Thegrain, perlite, gypsum, and water were combined together in a 1.5 gallon opaque autoclavable bag obtained from Fungi Perfecti and manually shook for 3 minutes to fully mix the materials. They were than autoclaved for 1 hour at 15 PSI and allowed 24hours to cool to room temperature. These bags were then inoculated using a liquid culture of Pleurotus ostreatus cells. The liquid culture of Pleurotus ostreatus cells was contained in a 4 L Erlenmeyer Flask and was composed of 7.5 g of groundcottonseed hulls from Planters Cotton Mill, Ak., 3 g of the aforementioned gypsum, 60 g of Barely Malt Sugar from Barry Farms, 3 g of nutritional yeast, and 1.5 L of municipal water. Along with an Eberbach blender containing 750 mL of municipal water,both were sterilized in an autoclave at 15 psi for 20 minutes. Under hepa-filtered laminar flow, three 60 mm diameter Petri dish cultures of P. ostreatus were cut in quarters and applied to the Eberbach blender upon reaching room temperature. Thecultures were then blended and applied to the 4 L Erlenmeyer flask. The media with the cell culture was then mixed on a magnetic stir plate for 3 days prior to adding the inoculum to the substrate.