Emerging first flush at Henk van Roij.
under the name Tuscan 860. This strain was developed by our American colleagues. Here in Europe we have developed another brown strain, which is distinct to the 860. We have developed the Tuscan 820 for the European market in our laboratories in France. So, when we are talking about Tuscan, it is really impor- tant to mention the number to differentiate between the two Tuscans.” The Tuscan 860 is indeed showing a good performance in the USA and Canada. The strain is also doing well In Ire- land. In the Netherlands, trials were also run with the 860, but without success. This could be due to the huge difference in mushroom gro- wing methods and raw materials, horse manu- re-based compost in the Netherlands compared with straw-based in North America, and the big difference in the casing soil, which has a much heavier structure in the Netherlands. Hesen comments: “The T820, as we call it, was prima- rily developed in France for Dutch compost and cultivation methods, with heavy casing soil. The T860 and T820 are also absolutely incom- patible. They cannot be mixed. At Inagro in West Flanders, we ran trials that compared the Heirloom and our T820 side by side.”
Financial returns
“These trials revealed that in three flushes, T820 had better financial returns than Heir- loom. The first flushes were comparable, but the second and third were better. The mushroom has a higher piece weight and lower picking costs. There is some criticism of the colour, which is said to be lighter than Heir- loom, but we believe that the colour can be made darker by using a different cultivation
Barend van de Laar, cultivation manager at Henk van Roij.’s farm
method, such as the casing soil, compost and the number of mushrooms. We also notice some moisture in the stems at the end of the flush, like a white variety, but that could be reduced by paying close attention to the com- post temperature at the end of the flush. Gro- wing this strain is different to growing the Amycel counterpart anyway. For example, with the T820, you have to stimulate evaporation strongly two days after cool down, and our strain is calmer regarding temperature deve- lopment. And we haven’t seen any signs of foa- ming until now.”
Pinhead outgrow
Bart Aldenzee, a colleague of Hesen, adds: “The cultivation process is slightly slower than Heir- loom, and a big difference is that almost all the pinheads that form do grow out into mushrooms. If you want to grow our strain in two flushes in four weeks, you can’t slow down the process, but you’ll succeed. It is easy to introduce spread and the pins develop well. However, maintaining good moisture levels in the casing is vital. With heavy casing it’s important to apply lots of CAC and work the
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