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By: Dr A. SENGOTTAIyAN T. SArAVANAN

MushrooMing prosperity through agri-wasteindia produces about 600 million tonnes of agricultural waste per annum and a major part of it is left out to decompose naturally or burnt in situ. this can effectively be utilised to produce high-nutritive-value food such as mushrooms.

not make their own food. Fungi have been around since prehistoric days. Their remains have been found in dinosaur pits!

Egyptian pharaohs (kings) re-served mushrooms for their own

plates. It was forbidden for anyone else to eat them. They believed that mushrooms had magical powers. The ancient Romans fed mushrooms only to their warriors because they believed mushrooms gave them God-like strength.

Mushrooms come in many col-ours, shapes and sizes. There are 38,000 different varieties and some are even poisonous. One should never eat mushrooms that are picked out-side of a store. The most common mushroom that is raised for eating is the white button mushroom (Agari-cus). Shitake, enoki and oyster mush-rooms are also raised for eating.

Mushroom farming started in the US in 1896 in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, which is called the ‘mushroom capital of the world.’ In early days, the area grew around 50 per cent of the mushrooms raised in the US. Mushrooms were planted in the fall and harvested in spring. One couldn’t get mushrooms to eat in the summer. Thanks to improvements in technology such as air-conditioning, today edible mushrooms are avail-able all year round.

world production and utilisation

Mushroom farming is being prac-M

ushrooms are part of a larger group of plants known as fungi. Fungi are different from

ordinary green plants as these can

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FebRUARY 2012 • FACTS FOR YOU 23

tised in more than a hundred coun-tries and its production is gradually increasing at an annual rate of 6 to 7 per cent. In 2007-08, world produc-tion of mushrooms was around 12 million tonnes and it is growing at an annual rate of above 7 per cent. It was estimated that the produc-tion and demand of mushrooms is expected to sustain the growth rate and reach 15 million tonnes by 2010, 25 million tonnes by 2020 and 30 million tonnes by 2025.

Presently, three geographical re-gions, viz, Europe, the US and East Asia, contribute to about 96 per cent of world mushroom production. The share of important varieties of mush-room production is: button (31 per cent), shiitake (24 per cent), oyster (14 per cent), black ear mushroom (9 per cent), paddy straw mushroom (8 per cent) and milky/others (the rest).

Most of mushroom production is concentrated in the US and Europe-an countries. The US (30 per cent), Germany (17 per cent), UK (11 per cent), France (11 per cent), Italy (10 per cent) and Canada (6 per cent) together contribute nearly 85 per cent of the world production and the balance (15 per cent) is consumed by the rest of the countries.

Mushrooms are consumed al-most entirely as food. With the rise in the income level, the demand for mushrooms is bound to increase in other parts of the world as well. The per capita consumption in these countries is very high—two to three kilograms as compared to twenty grams in India.

indian scenario

India is not a major producer of any of the mushroom varieties, but it does cultivate mushrooms and has a great potential to become a major pro-ducer in the near future. In the past, India could not utilise the potential for mushroom production in the coun-try. It learnt the production technique

from China, which contributes around 70 per cent of the world mushroom production creating employment op-portunities for more than 30 million people in the mushroom production to consumption chain.

Mushroom cultivation is an eco-nomically viable agricultural activ-ity. It provides gainful employment to the under-employed farmers in addition to additional income gen-eration. However, India lags behind many European and Asian countries in generation of newer production technologies, their refinement, pop-ularisation and adoption by farmers.

Major share of the consumer’s rupee is pocketed by the middle-men. Thus cooperative marketing and processing should be encour-aged to increase the producer’s share in consumer’s rupee. Govern-ment intervention is also necessary to safeguard the interest of mush-room cultivators. Keeping in view the increasing demand of mushroom due to globalisation, it is essential to work out the feasibility of mushroom cultivation and marketing to com-pete in the international market.

emerging scenario in india

Mushroom production in In-dia started very late in the 1970s, but the growth rate both in terms

All-India Production of Mushrooms

Year Production (’000 MT)

2001-02 402002-03 402003-04 402004-05 402005-06 352006-07 372007-08 372008-09 372009-10 41Source: Indian Horticulture Database 2010

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of productivity and production has been phenomenal. In seventies and eighties, button mushroom was grown as a seasonal crop in the

hills. But with the development of technologies for environmental con-trols and increased understanding of the cropping systems, mushroom

production shot up. The all-India production of mushrooms from 2001-02 to 2009-10 is given in the Table.

SWOT Analysis of Mushroom Industry in India

1. Mushrooms are highly perishable vegetable crop with less than two to three days of storability.

2. Climate control by refrigeration involves very high capital as well as recurring expenditure and the problems are further compounded by high electricity tariff.

3. Presently, more than 85 per cent of the total mushroom production in the country is of button mushroom. There is less diversification with respect to mushroom species as well as mushroom products.

4. Intellectual property rights regimes under World Trade Organization (WTO) have restricted free flow of genetic materials and import of high-yielding cultivars for use in breeding.

5. Inadequate implementation and follow-up of institute-village link-age programme for effective transfer of mushroom production tech-nology.

6. Non-availability of suitable integrated pest management (IPM) pack-ages for major pests and diseases of cultivated mushrooms.

7. Non-implementation of agricultural crop insurance schemes to the mushroom crop and absence of government-sponsored minimum support price (MSP) for mushroom crop.

Weaknesses

1. Mushroom production provides an ideal opportunity for conversion of agro-waste into wealth, quality food and organic manure and leads to high range of reduction in environmental pollution.

2. Mushroom being an indoor crop provides vast opportunities for em-powering rural and urban women through cultivation, production of value-added products and marketing. It also provides vast opportu-nities for unemployed youths to take up mushroom cultivation and marketing.

3. Mushroom provides an opportunity to eliminate protein malnutrition among people having cereals as staple food.

4. India can enter into a big and lucrative mushroom pharmaceutical international trade that is presently monopolised by some East-Asian countries and the US. There is big scope for diversifying mushroom export by including other mushroom species for export.

5. India attaining self-sufficiency in food production, the domestic mar-ket of mushroom is likely to enlarge sooner than later.

6. The collaborative arrangements of government institutions with non-government organisations, self-help groups and corporate sectors for processing, manufacturing of value-added products and market-ing of mushrooms.

Opportunities1. Over-dependence of mushroom industry on the imported technology

does not augur well for India, as the foreign firms try to export their technologies without assessing their suitability for Indian conditions.

2. With globalisation, there is competition not only for quality produce but also for the price.

3. Improper processing and packaging, especially of canned mush-room products, might lead to health hazards.

4. Tough competition from East-Asian countries as these are the major exporters of mushroom to the western countries.

5. In the field of mushroom research, India not only lags behind in de-veloping the varieties and technologies but the pace is also slow as compared to other countries, which explore modern research tools like biotechnology and highly sophisticated instruments.

Threats

Strengths

1. Mushrooms are cultivated indoors and do not require arable land. Small farmers and landless workers constitute major fraction of mushroom cultivation.

2. Mushroom is a short-duration crop with high yield per unit time. 3. Mushrooms are valued not only as nutritious and delicious food but

these also possess medicinal properties including anti-cancer and anti-HIV activities.

4. India with a population of over one billion people, has a vast domestic market for mushrooms.

5. Mushroom production has a labour-intensive nature and low labour cost is the biggest advantage of India, which it enjoys vis-à-vis de-veloped countries.

6. Cheap availability of agri-horticultural and forestry wastes, and cereal grains in sufficient quantities to produce around 5 million tonnes of mushrooms in India.

7. Round-the-year cultivation systems are in operation. Indian climate condition has an inherent advantage of diversification of mushroom cultivation in different regions and seasons of the country.

8. Strong research infrastructure and availability of expert manpower within the country.

9. Establishment of a National Mushroom Gene Bank at National Re-search Centre for Mushroom, housing more than 1000 accessions of different edible and cultivated species of mushrooms for developing high-yielding stress-resistant varieties.

10. Technologies for value-added mushroom products have been stand-ardised and are ready for commercialisation.

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Measures Needed1. Keeping in view the national mandate and vast objectives of the central govern-

ment, the National Research Centre for Mushroom (NRCM) should be upgraded into a full-fledged institute with at least one regional station in south, east, west and central India.

2. Skill and knowledge upgradation are important for attaining excellence in research. Human resource development and human resource management are key elements for achieving the goals of NRCM in a qualitative way. National Mushroom Gene Bank needs to be strengthened with respect to the physical facilities and human resources.

3. In button mushroom cultivation there is a need to standardise compost formulae based on the locally available substrates. There is also a need to develop low-cost pasteuri-sation system and cropping rooms with suitable environmental controls.

4. Use of ntegrated pest management technology for mushroom production.5. Research on utilisation of spent mushroom substrate (SMS) as organic manure,

vermicompost and bio-gas production.6. Cooperative marketing and market intelligence (both domestic and international)

will go a long way in ameliorating the problem of the farmers in marketing of mushrooms.7. Linkages with international institutions through collaborative research projects im-

portant for mushrooms, particularly genome sequencing.8. NRCM should develop and strengthen closer linkages with other research institu-

tions and universities for research studies. The strong linkages of NRCM and NGOs must be built for enhancement of mushroom consumption in rural areas.

Oyster, paddy straw and milky mushrooms are grown seasonally in the tropical/subtropical areas from April to October. The states where these mushrooms are popularly grown are Orissa, Maharashtra, Ta-mil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and North-Eastern re-gion. Today, mushroom farmers are looking forward with more and more corporate houses taking up mush-room cultivation.

India is basically an agricultural country with more than 70 per cent of the population being agriculture-dependent. Mushroom cultivation would help farmers reduce the de-pendence on land availability. India produces about 600 million tonnes of agricultural waste per annum and a

major part of it is left out to decom-pose naturally or burnt in situ. This can effectively be utilised to produce high-nutritive-value food such as mushrooms. Also, spent mushroom substrates can be converted into or-ganic manure or vermicompost.

trends in production and productivity

The world production of mush-rooms is estimated at about 12 mil-lion tonnes and annual growth rate is still above 7 per cent. At this growth rate, the world production was ex-pected to cross 15 million tonnes by 2010 and 30 million tonnes by 2025. Although India is endowed with fa-vourable natural agro-climate and

a rich source of agro-wastes, which could be exploited for cultivation of diverse mushroom species, the coun-try does not have any significant sta-tus either as a mushroom producer or a consumer. It is the right time for India to enter the global market, but present the Indian contribution is too meagre to be taken seriously in the world trade.

Some important reasons for low production of mushroom in India are late start, low domestic demand, in-adequate research and development support, and limited government pa-tronage. Among the states, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Tamil Nadu are the ma-jor contributors.

the way forward

Mushroom cultivation is a highly labour-oriented venture and labour availability is no constraint in India. Availability of raw materials and labour makes mushroom cultiva-tion economically profitable in In-dia. Moreover, the scope for intense diversification into cultivation of other edible mushrooms like oyster, shiitake and medicinal mushrooms presents additional opportunities for Indian growers.

Mushroom cultivation is suitable for integrated and sustainable farm-ing and should be encouraged for its integration with agriculture, fisher-ies and animal husbandry.

The authors are assistant professors in commerce, Kaamadhenu Arts and Sci-ence College, Sathyamangalam, Erode, Tamil Nadu