Radiocaesium and radiostrontium uptake by fruit bodies of Pleurotus eryngii via mycelium, soil and aerial absorption

There has been an extraordinary increase in interest concerning the transfer of radioactive contamination to the fruit bodies of fungi since the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident. These investigations, however, have focused exclusively on field studies aimed fundamentally at quantifying the behaviour of the radiocaesium component of the contamination. The results have shown great variability. As a contribution towards this body of knowledge, we have made a comparative study of the temporal evolution of the transfer of Sr-85 and Cs-134 via three routes of radioactive contamination - from the mycelium, from the surface layer of the soil, and directly onto the caps of the fruit bodies - for the saprophyte species, Pleurotus eryngii, under controlled laboratory conditions. The results indicate that the last of the above three uptake routes is the most efficient, and that the temporal evolution of the transfer is closely related to the radionuclide and the radioactive contamination route being considered. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.