| Summary: | The electrospinning technique has drawing more attention nowadays due to the surging interest in nanotechnology, especially the topic related to ultrafine fibers structure of various polymers with diameters down to nanometers range. Electrospinning provides nanofibers with high porosity and reusability compared to the other fabrication technique. In the field of bioprocess engineering, electrospinning technique is used to produce nanofibers from different polymers for cells immobilization, including bacteria, fungi and viruses. The Fungus called Volvariella volvacea or known as the paddy straw mushroom is one of the edible mushrooms which has been produced vastly in Malaysia. However, the sustainability issue for off-season use which has been a concerned as mushroom shelf-life is limited leads to entrapment of V. volvacea on electrospun nanofiber mat. Therefore, this research is conducted to investigate a polymer-based V.volvacea nanofiber mat in terms of morphology, mycelium growth rate, and storage stability. In this study, water-soluble polymers such as polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) and polyvinyl pyrrolidone have been electrospun with 0.2 g mycelia of V. volvacea to screen out the best polymer type at various concentrations of 4% (wt/v), 8% (wt/v), 12% (wt/v) and 16% (wt/v). PVA at 8% (wt/v) has shown as the best polymer material in electrospun V. volvacea mycelia with the highest biomass production of 0.68 g. The selected 8% (wt/v) PVA nanofibers mat was used in the optimization of electrospinning conditions using the response surface methodology of Box-Behnken design with 17 runs. It was found that the optimum electrospinning conditions were spinning distance at 10 cm, voltage at 16 kV and flow rate at 1.2 mL/h with an 89% of increment in biomass yield. The structural properties of the optimized V.volvacea nanofiber mat were characterized by using scanning electron microscopy and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The fresh optimized V.volvacea nanofiber mat was able to retain the viability of V.volvacea after being stored at 25 ˚C for 8 days. In conclusion, the results showed that the synthesized PVA electrospun nanofiber mat is capable of immobilizing V. volvacea to overcome the stability issue in the cultivation of mushrooms.
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