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Kasper Moreaux of Mycelia surrounded by fans.


Dan Royse during his presentation.


Congress


A number of international speakers were invited, including Dan Royse from Penn State University, USA. He gave an interesting lecture about mushroom growing worldwide and the current situation in the USA. He explained that 65% of the mushrooms in the USA are grown in Pennsylvania and 12% in California. 19% of the mushrooms farms are certified to cultivate organic mushrooms.


Royse described various composting and cultivation systems. He also showed a series of photographs ranging from an extremely simple harvesting system in India where mushrooms are picked first and the stalks removed at a central location (something that still happens in Brazil), to highly advanced computer-controlled harvest- ing systems, including in the Netherlands. Mr Kab-Yeul Jang from Korea spoke on the current situation in South Korea where oyster mushroom growing dominates. He illustrated his presentation with a rich selection from his collection that showed impressive scenes of mass production. Growers in Korea have apparently really mastered the art of cultivation, as the pictures of oysters mushrooms grown in bottles showed not a single bottle with anything less than brilliant production.


Kasper Moreaux from Mycelia in Belgium treated the audience to a very interesting talk on the technical details of producing spawn. He showed the important points to pay attention to and the equipment necessary for professional results. This is particularly important in a country like Brazil where it is very complicated and often impossible to import products like such as spawn. Edison de Souza (Brasmicel Ltda) spoke on mushroom growing in Brazil and called on his colleagues to follow the lead of advanced mush- room-producing countries like the Netherlands. Perhaps Dutch technology is a step too far, but a lot of work has to be done in Brazil to improve the technology, and therefore production and quality.


Dutch expats


Representing Italy was Paul Meijer, a cultivation advisor of Dutch origin, who has earned his spurs in mushroom growing in Italy and the USA. At his age, Meijer (75) is taking things a little easier, but he is still active in the sector. In his first session he told us about the various composting systems he has come across in his career. Together with a number of Italian grow- ers, Meijer was a pioneer of tunnel composting, a system which evolved further at the time in Italy. Tests were done to see the effect of blowing air into the tunnels, but the effects of sucking in air from above were also examined. Paul clearly indicated his preference for closed tunnel composting in phase I, as applied by CNC in the Netherlands, for example. In his opinion, good mixing of the raw materials is one of the key details in composting. Jos Buth, also from the Netherlands, but currently based in Chile, gave a presentation on casing soil raw materials and the options available in Brazil. Jos has been familiar with the Brazilian mushroom sector for many years and has witnessed it slowly change. Importing casing soil is not really an option according to him. It is an expensive commodity and there is too much corruption linked to unloading and releasing goods from the ports in Brazil. So the best alternative raw material has to be found, if present at all in this immense country - but due to the climate and soil conditions that is no easy task. He also spoke about processing casing soil, and pre-wetting and pasteurising casing - which is always essential in a country like Brazil.


To sum up, visitors can look back on a sym- posium with a wide variety of lecturers. The event was very well organised, and the fantastic weather (28 degrees Celsius in the middle of winter) obviously helped a bit too!


In Brazil, huge progress is


being made with professional compost


production.


 MUSHROOM BUSINESS 27


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