Pleurotus spp. Cultivation on Different Agri-Food By-Products: Example of Biotechnological Application

Agri-food industry generally produces huge volumes of wastes all over the world, and their disposal is a threat to the environment and public health. The chemical composition of most of these wastes make them be defined as lignocellulosic materials, so they could be a suitable substrate for solid-state fermentation process operated by mushrooms. White-rot fungi are well known for their degradation ability of lignocellulosic material, and many scientific works reported the use of different substrates for their production. Biotechnological treatments of agri-food wastes by mushrooms could be considered an eco-friendly solution to reuse and valorize them, besides to reduce their environmental impact. In this way, wastes would be transformed into new resources to produce added-value food products, besides representing an economic return for the same industries. The aim of this review is to provide an overview of the recent literature concerning the use of different agri-food residues as growth substrates for Pleurotus spp. cultivation, with attention to their effects on the growth and chemical composition of the cultivated mushrooms.