Mushrooms are rich in proteins and minerals such as calcium, iron and phosphorus etc. They are taken as edible food instead of consuming meat. Mushrooms are used in many part of the Asian continent such as Japan, Korea and china as staple food. In India, the culture of eating mushroom has just started slowly due to the introduction of Chinese food in the country.
Volvariella volvacea, which is considered to be the third most important mushroom in the world, has started to gain its attention among the mushroom growers in the country. This is due its taste and fast growing ability compared to other cultivated mushroom.
These mushrooms can grow under favorable environment and medium. The pin head of the mushroom forms within 4-5 days after spawning and comes to harvest within another 4-5 days. As one crop cycle completes within 35-40 days, hence many number of crops can be raised in short duration of time.
Cultivation Method:
The spawn is said to be the seed material used in the propagation for the mushroom production. Inorder to create a bed for the mushroom spawn propagation, sorghum grain or chopped paddy straw supplemented with horse gram or red gram powder are used.
The dried paddy straw is made into rope like twist (205 m length and 5-8 cm diameter) and tied into small bundles. The twisted bundles are immersed in clean cold water for 6-12 hours and then they are dried in shade to drain off the excess water. The bundles are then untied and straightened twists are placed length wise over another (bundles) in crosswise manner. The bundles are stalked one above the other to form 2-3 layers of the wet paddy straw bundles. The spawns are then made into small pieces of 2.5 cm thick and placed over the straw bed peripheral region (5-8 cm away from the edge and 10 cm apart). Take a teaspoon full of coarsely powdered red gram powder and sprinkle over the bed before and after spawning the first layer. Similarly do the same for the other layer too. After finishing with layering of straws and sprinkling of the red gram powder, press the bed properly from the top inorder to remove excess water. Use transparent polythene sheet to pack the bed compactly and through this way the temperature and relative humidity within the bed will be maintained properly. Now place the wooden plank over the bed and place some bricks above that inorder to get more compactness. The bed is left undisturbed for a week and then the sheet is slowly removed at the end of the week. The moisture level is observed and if the excess moisture is found in the bed, then the sheet is remove for half hour and rewrapped in the same manner.
After the end of the week, small white round pinheads will be appearing along the sides of the bed. Thus by the end of 9th day (2 days after the pinhead formation), we can find fully matured button shaped mushroom in egg stage. The mushroom is harvested at the egg stage and about 2-3 kgs of mushrooms will be obtained from 10 kg of straw. The straw is then sun dried and used for as cattle feed.
Nutritional Value:
Proximate composition of the paddy straw mushroom (verma 2002)
S.No | Content | Composition (quantity/100g fresh mushroom) |
1 | Moisture | 90.40 (g) |
2 | Fat | 0.25 (g) |
3 | Protein | 3.90 (g) |
4 | Crude fiber | 1.87 (g) |
5 | Ash | 1.10 (g) |
6 | Phosphorus | 0.10 (g) |
7 | Potassium | 0.32 (g) |
8 | Iron | 1.70 (g) |
9 | Calcium | 5.60 (mg) |
10 | Thiamine | 0.14 (mg) |
11 | Riboflavin | 0.61 (mg) |
12 | Niacin | 2.40 (mg) |
13 | Ascorbic acid | 18.00 (mg) |
