Mushrooms are fleshy, spore bearing fungi. These spores germinate under favorable conditions to microscopic filaments which branch to form a mycelium. Fusion of compatible mycelia gives rise to fruiting bodies. Nutritionally, mushrooms are called saprophyte and obtain their food from non-living matter. Carbon and nitrogen sources including other elements available in the substrates support vegetative growth and fruiting development of the fungi.
The fast-growing mushrooms are good source of delicious food with high nutritional attributes like proteins, essential amino acids, fats, vitamins, carbohydrates and fibers, and some have medicinal values as well. The art of mushroom propagation has advanced dramatically in the past decades due to the techniques of spawn preparation, wide selection of low cost materials and availability of agro-industrial wastes used as growing substrates.
PREPARATION OF POTATO-DEXTROSE-AGAR (PDA)
Raw Materials
Fresh good quality potatoes 200 g
Dextrose powder 20 g
Agar bar (gulaman) 20 g
Distilled water 1 L
Procedure
- Wash, peel and dice the potatoes. Place 200 g in a casserole where water has started to boil and allow to boil until potatoes are soft enough for the pallate.
- Strain the broth (decoction) through cheesecloth. Restore the volume of decoction to 1 L and put back into the casserole.
- Add the agar (chipped) and the dextrose powder. Heat while stirring occasionally until the agar dissolves.
- Dispense 30 mL in each flat rhum bottle and plug the mouth with the bottle cotton.
- Sterilize the medium in a pressure cooker at 121°C or 15-lb. pressure for 15 minutes. Immediately after sterilization, slant the test tubes at an angle of 20 to 25 degrees, making sure that the agar does not touch the cotton plug.
- Lay the bottles flat on the table until the agar congeals.
ISOLATION OF THE PURE CULTURE (by Tissue Culture Method)
Tissue Culture Method (Volvariella volvaceae)
- Select a good, young, healthy and fresh mushroom (button stage for straw mushroom). Disinfect with 70% rubbing alcohol using a cotton swab.
- Cut vertically and horizontally half portion of the button stage mushroom.
- With a sterilized scalpel, cut approximately 1- cm cube to the tissue between the cap and stem and place on the middle of the plated agar.
- Incubate for 5 to 7 days at ordinary temperature. This is termed as pure tissue culture.
- Transfer the pure culture into agar slants.
- Incubate for 5 to 7 days at ordinary temperature. This is now termed as sub-culture.
PREPARATION OF SPAWN SUBSTRATES
- Place chopped dried substrate; i.e., rice straw, banana, leguminous leaves in a suitable container and add water until completely submerged. Place something heavy on top to avoid floatation.
- Ferment substrate anaerobically in water with urea (3 grams per gallon of water) as follows:
- chopped, dried tobacco midribs – 3 days
- chopped, dried kakawati leaves – 5 days
- chopped, dried ipil-ipil leaves – 5 days
- chopped, dried rice straw – 3 days
- chopped, dried water lily – 2 days
- chopped, dried banana leaves – 3 days
- Wash the substrate with tap water three times or until objectionable odor is removed.
- Mix with sawdust at a proportion of two parts substrate to one (2:1) part sawdust.
- Add rice bran (Class A) at 20% of the major substrate.
- Readjust the moisture at 65% to 70% (damp moisture).
- Place substrates in polypropylene bags (PP) and 500 g/bag. Use 6×10 PP bags and pull-end of the bag, pass thru a PVC pipe ring (1” long x 1” dia.) Plug with used cotton, cover with scratch paper and tie with a rubber band.
- Sterilize at 15-lb. pressure for 1 to 1½ hours or steam for 4 hours in a drum.
- Cool, inoculate with pure culture.
INOCULATION OF THE SPAWN
- Sterilize the inoculating needle in the flame of an alcohol lamp.Lift from the inoculum about 1.5 cm² and transfer into the bagged substrate.
- Flame the lip of the bag as well as the lip of the rhum bottle containing the inoculum before lifting a portion for transfer.
- The inoculum substrate is now termed spawn and is ready for planting into beds after two weeks.
BACKYARD PLANTING OF STRAW MUSHROOM
Materials
Mushroom spawn of good quality
Bedding materials (rice straw/banana leaves)
Urea ( fertilizer)
Plastic sheet (5m/3 m bed)
Soaking vessels
Benlate (fungicide)
Procedure
- Gather good quality substrates (dried rice straw and dried banana leaves).
- Arrange the substrates, bundle with plastic straw in the middle to about 4” diameter. Have the substrate cut to 18” length.
- Soak the bundled substrates in clean, tap water for a considerable period of time. Rice straw requires 3-4 hours soaking while banana leaves require 10-12 hours soaking. This procedure renders the substrate pliable. It allows sufficient water supply required for the growth of mold during its incubation period. Do not oversoak the material.
- While the material is being soaked, prepare the bed foundation. This could either be made of soil, wood or concrete. Most economical and practical is soil foundation. This is done by making a foundation similar to a garden plot which should be east-west oriented under a partially shaded area.
- Prepare the fertilized paper (old newspaper) soaked in 3g urea/gal of water for 10-20 minutes.
- After the completion of the required soaking period, haul the materials from the soaking vessel and allow excess water to drain freely.
- Lay the substrates on the bed foundation and make up 3 to 4 layers during the dry season and 5 to 7 layers during the rainy season. Make the first layer by closely laying enough soaked substrates side by side until the whole length of the plot is covered.
- Distribute pieces of half-squeezed fertilized paper only along the edges of the laid substrates.
- Distribute spawn (300 g) to the layers of a 3-m bed. Place a thumb-sized spawn on the top of each piece of distributed fertilized paper. Keep a 2-3” distance between spawns.
- Repeat the preceding procedure as you make the second, third and succeeding layers.
- Cover the entire bed with plastic sheet to assure temperature build-up and to retain the moisture required for the mushroom mold to ramify. This should be left intact for 5 days (dry season) or 7 days or more, depending on the existing climatic conditions (cool, rainy months).
- Aerate the bed on the 5th or 7th day after the incubation period by removing the plastic cover. This will allow the release of toxic gases which may affect the growth of mushroom. In cases of storm, heavy rain or too windy a place, raising the plastic sheet for less than an hour in the morning is sufficient.
- Return the plastic sheet cover, but never allow this to touch the pinheads to avoid spoilage of mushroom.
Care and Management
High yielding mushroom beds depend on three interrelated factors: good quality spawns, preparation of bed and care and management. More tips follow:
- Keep the surrounding clean.
- Keep the bed moist if necessary. Do this by spraying with clean water making sure that it does not exert pressure to avoid breaking the thread-like structures spreading on the substrates.
- DO NOT WATER THE BEDS WHEN PINHEADS APPEAR. This will give way to early decomposition of fruits.
- Picking up mushrooms would be realized on the 14th and 21st day depending on the prevailing environmental conditions. When picking/harvesting, do not use any sharp tools to remove the fruit from the substrate. Hold the base of the mushroom with bare hands and apply a simple twisting motion.
- In case the bed is infected with other kinds of molds or infested with insects, take the harvestable mushroom before applying the prescribed fungicide/insecticide and do this by spot spraying.
- Maintain the temperature of the bed at 32° to 35°C during the fruiting. No mushroom will fruit if temperature drops to 20°C. Mushrooms grown at higher temperature will be smaller and lighter in weight.
- After a lapse of one month, discard used substrates (spent bed).
Source: mis.dost.gov.ph
Written by Lito Montala
Lito Montala was an online entrepreneur who enjoys blogging about entrepreneurship and gathering information for his blog to help budding entrepreneurs. You can also reach him on twitter: http://twitter.com/LitoMontala
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{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }
Hello!
Thank you very much for featuring mushroom production; I am interested in this as a livelihood project in the near future.
How I wish to receive more information anything about mushrooms, including production, management, potential market etc.
Hello!
Thank you very much for featuring mushroom production; I am interested in this as a livelihood project in the near future.
How I wish to receive more information — anything about mushrooms, including production, management, potential market etc.
thanks Marlo for your comments. I try to find more about mushrooms in my future posts.
Thanks for your good article.
I want to try to grow Straw mushroom in a small green house
with a hot pad and hot water
humidifier, but I wonder whether
I can buy the sub-culture stage
one in a rhum bottle, just before INOCULATION OF THE SPAWN?
If I can, could you tell me
net volume of the sub-culture and how much Kg of grain I can
inoculate, please?
(Kg of dry grain before steam
sterilized)
You can also tell me the price including the culture and
express air mail(not UPS or DHL)
to Mxico, and how many days to
be delivered.
May I expect a reply ASAP ?
Many thanks.
Dong KIM
Hello Dong J. Kim,
Sorry I’m no expert on this. I’m just blogging about it.
Thanks for your prompt reply to
my e-mail address, too.
If you can refer to a reliable source who can supply
the (sub-)culture, just leave a
notice, please.
I had a filipino site before,
but I cann’t find it now.
Thanks again.
Dong KIM
this is a nice blog,very informative,im interested for mushroom culture i hope this info will help a lot.thanks
hello everyone,
please visit our site mushroomlab.multiply.com
we are based in tarlac city, batangas ,laguna.
our products:
volva spawn
pleurotus spawn & fruiting bags
starter packages for volva cultivation available thru lbc
our services:
seminars (anywhere in the philippines or abroad)
contact no. 0916 995 2445
now available: (start learning at home)
video of mushroom production
available for download
or thru lbc
Dear,
I am not sure how to pick the tissue from straw mushroom (button stage), could you provide us the picture or video for our follow up.
Thanks and best regards,
Socheath
thanks for this post..
it really raised my interest for growing mushroom..
i will be trying it..
it is such a great help…
thanks a lot..
planting, harvesting,distribution process, marketing process of musroom. at makano poh ang bentahan ng spawn mushroom?
I am one of the straw mushroom spawn producer. I am intrested your webside and new technology for optimization of production cost. So I would like to known about this in detail. I will be glad to received this .
For suppliers info, check below:
Mushroom Seeds, Supplies and other information
Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI)
Ms. Estrella D. Tuazon
Chief, Plant Quarantine Service
San Andres, Malate, Manila City
Tel No. (632) 523-9132
Fax No. (632) 524-2812
E-mail: bpi@edsamail.com.ph
Mushroom Producers Association of the Philippines, Inc.
c/o Daily Harvest Manufacturing Corporation
21 Railroad Street, Port Area, Manila
Tel. No. (632) 442-5074
im willing to share info more about mushroom culture just txt lang po me 09295977477 thanks
It is not clear. Please clarify more.
Thanks.
pls give me a pic regarding on the steps og mushroom production…T.Y! & more Power
in one of your tv show “kabuhayan swak na swak” you show how to raise mushroom in a plastic bag with saw dust as medium. please me know how to do that, so i can raise my own for home consumption.
I sprayed my button and shiitake mushrooms with high concentrate fungicide and it grow rapidly.
Mr. Lito;
Sometime ago you showed 2 references from where we can
get info for straw mushroom culture, but e-mail address of
1) is wrong and mail bounced back.
I was not able to call 2) from country side in Mexico.
Could you provide us with right e-mail addresses of 1), 2)
and also of government or private mushroom research
centers where we can get spores, culture or spawn of straw
mushroom, please ?
Straw mushroom is abandent in south-east Asia and
Philliphines is English speaking place, easy to communicate,
but hard to get info ?! It’s a nonsense –
The world is running and ready even to fly -
Yours Sincerely, pristinekim@hanmail.net
1)Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI)
Ms. Estrella D. Tuazon
E-mail: bpi@edsamail.com.ph
2)Mushroom Producers Association of the Philippines, Inc.
21 Railroad Street, Port Area, Manila
Tel. No. (632) 442-5074
@D J Kim
So sorry for that. Maybe that is the reason why the Philippines is very far behind. I can’t promise anything but maybe this website will help http://www.bpi.da.gov.ph/
Mr. Lito;
Thanks for your prompt reply and I appreciate your
deligency on your blog and the royalty to a person who
left a comment in your blog.
I found out a contact e-mail address, cu.bpi@da.gov.ph, buplant@yahoo.com, from http://www.bpi.da.gov.ph/
you showed above, and I will contact them right away.
My hobby like interst turned to a project in one of university. WHY: Trying to grow straw mushroom in
North America was unsuccessful and failed, http://www.wikipedia.com and other references.
Only place you can try to grow straw mushroom is southern part US and middle- and northern part of Mexico
(If you think it’s north America), but southern Califonia, Arizona, New Mexico and western Texas of USA and middle northern part of Mexico is like a desert(~semi desert) except Florida(** North America should be north from PANAMA, but it depends on what point of view people say(politically, economical sense, geophygical point of view and history.)
My 2nd Why: The challenge: Nobody succeeded to grow
in north America and anybody did try to grow mushroom
in a desert, whether it’s failed or not– ? — We have to see–
I will contact the e-mail and other potential e-mails,
if I can get further references, but in case I will look for
another sauces in Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar and
Indonesia.
Thanks your attention, DJ Kim
Hi,
I am a Shiitake mushroom grower and am looking for certified organic Shiitake spawn. Can you tell me if you have this available?
Kind regards,
Tracey Paquet
@Tracey Paquet
Sorry I’m only blogging about it and don’t have mushrooms for cultivation.
I am really interested in growing rice straw mushroom, but I don’t have any experiences on how to prepare spawn substrates and the process of growing.
By the way, I have read the instructions written in this website and am aware of it so it will be very good if there is an easy method of spawn preparation.
If you have any ideas for sharing, please feel free to contact me.
I am looking forward to hearing from you soon.
My best regards,
KOY Serey
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am a OFW,planning to start a small home-business like mushroom raising in my lot.I want to know how and the things needed in order to start.And also contact agencies and people to inquire if any during my propagation..I would be grateful if you could help with my inquiries.I just saw this kind of business once in your show.And I didn’t have the chance to get the contacts.Thank you.
gides for growing mushroom
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