Mushroom Field Visit

Mushroom  farm field visit

Purpose
The puurpose of the field visit was to observe how  mushrooms are produced.


Introduction
Man  have managed to manipulate the growing environment of edible Basidiomycetes and optimise their production. To this end a wide variety of mushroom are now commercially grown mushrooms.

Materials and Methods
Basically  the mushroom growing process involves the use of substrate such as wheat straw. The straw is prepared by pastuerising it and incubating it through various decomposition stages with the aid of chicken manure and urea under various specific  temperature, oxygen and humidity conditions.
After weeks of  preparing the substrate,  the substrate is packaged in  wooden trays and the substrate is inoculated with spawn in form of grain colonised  with the mushroom fungi. After inoculation, the substrate containging spawn is incuubated at different growing temperatures which are dependent of the mushroom that is being grown until they start emerging and reach a certain size required for harvest.

 Results

                                     Wheat straw before (right) and after(left) decomposition

                                            Decomposed straw in wooden trays

                                      Spawn applied to decomposed straw in incubation room

                Mushroom emerging and masses of mycelium colonising the decomposed straw

                                           Mushroom emerging and ready for harvest

                                          Verticillium problem addressed by aplying salt

                                              Some off type mushroom with exposed gills

                                                              Brown mushroom emerging



Discussion
Mushroom production is one of  the various ways that man appreciates and benefit from fungi, at least it takes away the "bad guy" perception that ordinary people always associate with fungi particularly in their role in both plant and animal diseases.
Interestingly there are also some fungi such as Verticilium spp and moulds that can be problematic in mushroom production. The major challenge for most mushroom producers is mangaging such problematic fungi as they try not  to use fungicides to manage them.


Conclusion
Mushroom production is a well thought way of manipulating growing conditions to optimize the growth of an intended fungi.Challenges still exist especially in managing uninteded fungi and tthere lies opportunities for plant pathologist to develop acceptable management strategies.