Screening of Cultivatable Indigenous Fungi which Responsible for Decomposing of Rice Straw

Abstract

The experiment was conducted to screen potentials indigenous fungi for rapid decomposing of rice straw. Sevenisolates of dominant fungi were isolated from the burying rice straw on the 2.5 cm soil depth after 30 days incubationon the paddy fields. Five dominant isolates were tested for their potential to decompose rice straw by assessingtheir value of decreasing C/N ratio and dry weight of rice straw. Fungal inoculums treatments were arranged in aCompletely Randomized Design with four replications. The results showed that the dominant cultivable fungi thatisolated from decomposed rice straw were Trichoderma sp., Fusarium sp., Mucor sp., Aspergillus sp., and Penicilliumsp. Among the tested fungi, Trichoderma sp. had the biggest ability to decompose rice straw compared to othersindigenous fungi. The C/N ratio was reduced to 39.47 from an initial value of 73.33 of control treatment in 10 days ofbiodegradation process in laboratory scale, thus showing the potential of indigenous Trichoderma sp. for use inlarge-scale composting of rice straw.

Keywords

• Cultivable
• decomposer
• indigenous fungi
• rice straw