The experimental data presented herein are the result of exploratory research aimed at bracketing the necessary moisture and inoculum loads for effective pilot-scale distributed upgrading of wheat straw stems for produc­tion of straw-thermoplastic composites (4,15). An exploratory approach was chosen for these tests because full-scale outdoor systems having few envi­ronmental controls would be difficult if not impossible to closely control. Both temperature and moisture levels vary owing to variations in heat,

humidity, and wind. Precise real-time control of temperature and moisture in such a system would be very expensive, and thus counter to the goal of using distributed systems. We therefore decided to choose conditions of moisture and inoculum that provided average fungal degradation of the stems and rapid competitiveness of the inoculated fungus at a single tem­perature. We then conducted statistical analyses of the data in order to predict the expected variability of final composition in response to varia­tions in initial moisture and inoculum.