Mushrooms are fleshy growths of fungus that are used as food items
throughout the world. Since ancient time, mushroom has been considered as one
of the important food items though some of them are found to be poisonous. With
the time goes by, its consumption continues to increase due to its significant
role in human health, nutrition and diseases. So cultivating mushrooms can
bring considerable economic benefits.
Malawi is a developing country and it is necessary for its government
to take effective measures to develop economy. And cultivating mushrooms can be
one of the ways, which can make the farmers earn considerable income and employ
many others to improve their living condition. However, in Malawi, the wild
edible mushrooms are more popular than the cultivated mushrooms, which are available
only during the rainy season.
In this paper, the authors studied the situation of cultivated
mushrooms in Malawi. And oyster mushroom, Pleurotus
ostreatus, is the main species that is being commercially cultivated by
almost all the mushroom farmers; almost all of the button mushrooms available
in Malawi at the moment are imported mainly from the Republic of South Africa. The
authors collected information through review of existing documents and
interviews with main actors in mushroom production in Malawi. Then they
discussed the cultivation method of mushrooms, including substrate preparation,
spawning, and incubation and fruiting. Next, they investigated the condition of
marketing of cultivated mushrooms and the domestication of wild edible
mushrooms in Malawi.
Finally some challenges of mushroom cultivation were presented: 1) Red
sorghum, which was used as medium for spawn, was not produced in abundance in
Malawi; 2) The method used for chopping maize stover was very tedious and
inefficient; 3) There are no well-defined markets and market channels for
mushrooms; 4) The government as well as non-governmental organizations in the
country were giving very limited attention to mushroom production; and 5) there
is a lack of production “know-how” and awareness on economic, nutritional and
medicinal benefits of cultivated mushrooms.
In summary, Malawi has huge potential for mushroom farming because of
the availability of large amounts of agricultural crop residues. There is also
a high demand for mushrooms, locally as well as internationally. So, the
country can take advantage of these factors to develop the mushroom industry. And
there is a need to introduce and popularize other cultivated species of
mushrooms and some low-cost production technologies that can be easily adopted
in the country should be developed.
Article by Alfred Chioza and Shoji
Ohga, from Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan.
Full access: http://mrw.so/RrSWX
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| Image by Hannah Sue Gray, from Flickr-cc. |
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