CHINA Jan Gielen during his lecture.
spawned compost per week) and is chair of the American Mushroom Institute. With plenty of first-hand experience, Alonzo explained why it can be worthwhile using Casing Inoculum (CI) in his situation. CI, or caccing spawn, is a mycelium supplied by the usual spawn suppliers, but grown on a different basic medium, and is easy to mix with casing soil. “Its use is widespread in the USA, as we use a lot of Canadian sphagnum peat, a fine type of peat, to make our casing soil. Mixing in CI reduces our dependency on the quality of our phase II compost and produces more consistent results – contrary to CAC, which involves mixing compost in the casing.” Alonzo used a series of photos to illustrate his tips on how to use CI. “Make sure you use the same spawn strain as in the compost. In our situation, we are more than satisfied to work with CI.”
The owner of Kingfi t, Mr Jin, one of the main sponsors of the Mushroom Days, during his speech at the ‘Night of Button Mushrooms’.
Nematodes and strains
Kristen Roskov from chemical giant BASF spoke on nematodes deployed to combat mushroom sciarid flies. In the UK, BASF produces Nemasys M, the brand name of Steinernema Feltiae, a substance that mainly contains live nematodes. This product is now also on sale in the USA. Roskov: “What we are talking about here is a ´beneficial´ nematode that help us control the flies by preventing the larvae from hatching.” Using nematodes as a form of pest control is still in its infancy in China. Professor Jianhua Liao lectured on the development of Chinese spawn strains for Agaricus. Breeding mushroom varieties is also being done in China. “Traditio- nal cultivation in China actually only uses Chinese varieties which produce mushrooms with a flatter cap, but can also cope with our method of composting on rice straw, for example. Imported varieties such as Sylvan A15 are only used on modern phase III companies.”
Stand of Chris- tiaens at the fair, with on the right director Mart Christiaens and Junior Hanegraaf, manager of the Chinese Chris- tiaens plant and speaker at the conference.
Air distribution and NIR Geoff Martin, GM of the Australian Mushroom Composters then gave a lengthy presentation on the production of phase I compost. He explained what happens at his plant before and during the process, with an emphasis on the micro-orga- nisms active during the phase I process. He also stressed the importance of properly aerating the percolate.
Climate specialist Jan Gielen from training and consultancy agency Delphy Mushrooms spoke on the ideal design of a growing room, which should be configured to prevent problems relating to
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