Orchard Cultivation of Stropharia rugosoannulata Enhances Mushroom Quality, Vegetable Yield, and Soil Fertility

Stropharia rugosoannulata is an edible, litter-decomposing mushroom that can convert lignocellulosic residues into high-value food, yet field evidence linking cultivation environment, spent-substrate recycling, subsequent vegetable performance, and soil microbial responses remains limited. We first compared mushroom production in open-field, orchard, and plastic-greenhouse environments and then evaluated an orchard-based S. rugosoannulata–vegetable rotation using pak choi, cucumber, cowpea, and wax gourd. Mushroom yield did not differ significantly among environments, whereas orchard cultivation produced larger, more uniformly developed fruiting bodies with higher soluble protein and soluble sugar contents. Relative to non-rotated controls, rotation increased edible yield by 40.19% in pak choi, 32.75% in cucumber, 43.63% in cowpea, and 39.23% in wax gourd. The rotation treatment also increased soluble protein and soluble sugar contents and generally enhanced superoxide dismutase (SOD), peroxidase (POD), and catalase (CAT) activities in the four vegetables. Incorporating spent mushroom substrate increased soil organic matter, total nitrogen, available phosphorus, and available potassium, with the greatest organic-matter response in orchard soil. Amplicon analysis further showed treatment separation in principal-coordinate space and shifts in dominant bacterial phyla, including Chloroflexi, Acidobacteriota, Proteobacteria, and Actinobacteriota. These results indicate that orchard cultivation can improve the market-related quality of S. rugosoannulata and that coupling mushroom production with vegetable rotation can recycle residual substrate while improving horticultural productivity and soil fertility. Multi-season trials with complete environmental monitoring and publicly archived sequencing data are required to test the durability and generality of these benefits.