AUSTRALIA
rooms are filled on Wednesdays and Fridays to spread the flushes. They use a six-week cropping cycle producing three flushes. They only produce white mushrooms, but in various size and quality grades. 15% of the production is picked as jumbo flats, which are much loved by Australians. The last mushrooms each week in the first flush are allowed to grow into flats. The stem is sliced away just below the cap.
Sprinklers have been integrated into the roof construction to prevent the intense heat and sunlight drying out the surface of the compost.
lands. The growing rooms are equipped with Fancom climate control computers and have under-bed irrigation systems After some adjust- ments to the spray nozzles, this system works perfectly on the casing soil sourced from Ireland and the Netherlands. Parwan uses various Dutch and Irish casing soil suppliers to compensate for any variations in casing quality. Each week, two growing rooms are filled with 95 kg phase III compost per m2 from ScatoPlus, a company two hours’ drive away. The spawn is Sylvan A15, and the supplement is from Champfood. The
The quality of mushrooms in Australia probably ranks as the highest in the world. Some custo- mers even demand transparent packaging so their customers can see the quality at the base of the packaging. This makes it impossible to deceive customers by hiding inferior quality mushrooms out of sight. Such high demands, even though huge variations in weather conditi- ons (47 degrees) can affect compost quality not making producing good quality mushrooms an easy matter. Close cooperation and contact with the compost supplier is therefore essential. In the meantime close ties have developed between Parwan and ScatoPlus.
Modernisation at ScatoPlus Compost producer ScatoPlus, owned by Bill Littleson and Mick Surridge has seen massive developments take place in the past 18 months, and many highly professional improvements are being implemented. There is enough availability of raw materials,
The management team at ScatoPlus. Clockwise from left: Des Lamprell (with cap, phase I manager), Zlatko Vidmar (technical manager), Andrew Glatte (operations director), Munya Nyanhanda (Parwan Valley), Mick Surridge (owner/director), Mark Jones (logistics manager), Mohammad Mirzadeh (QA manager), Mark Riordan (phase II manager). Missing from the line-up is director and co-owner Bill Littleson.
14 MUSHROOM BUSINESS
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