NEW ZEALAND / AUSTRALIA
Jan Böging, Rinke van der Meer, and Eric Vernooij (ltr) at the lunch.
Douglas Schirripa and Rob Tolson on the bus.
Delegates listen to the presentation by Sean O’Connor, 4AG Robotics CEO at the conference in Auckland.
Automation panel. Robotic picking or no robot picking?
occurs prior to, at and after airing. The options available to manipulate the pin set are limitless, using the casing soil to limit and control the pin set, casing density, CAC rate, using the environment, air speed, CO2
and RH% to set pins and create stagger and modifying the established pin
set during pin development by raising CO2 levels and air temperature, pruning, doping or choking to promote more advanced pins and holding back the less developed. Ray said; “Always remember that a strand of mycelium is capable of pinning when it is connected to the compost interface and reaches the pinning environment at the casing surface, but that the receptor at the surface will only pin if it recognizes the stimulus; 13 days after stimulus the mushroom reaches its harvestable size.” His sage advice, produce the pin set that best suits your market and your ability to harvest. Dr. Michael Wolfin (Penn State), lectured on the development of novel IPM methods to control mushroom flies. To be able to control phorid and sciarid flies the grower needs to know the enemy and its growing cycle. Flies can be characterized as inva- ders or emergers. Wolfin showed how fly
10 MUSHROOM BUSINESS
populations can get out of control incredi- bly fast. Good fly management knocks down invaders as well as emergers. Elec- trostatic screens and essential oils work very well. Wolfin discussed the use of nematodes for fly control, Steinernema carpocapsae are very effective, but for good control have to be added to the case run every 4 to 5 days. Predatory mites also give good control and do not spread disease or damage mycelium. Good results have been had using Vestergaard long lasting insecti- cide deltamethrin impregnated nets hung in growing rooms. The efficacy of Organis-
Strain breeding is all
about three attributes: ‘More, Better and Different’.
Shield, a sucrose octonoate ester, is under investigation, this compound dissolves the waxy layer of soft bodied insects. Takea- ways: suppression methods have got to be easy for growers to adapt and biologicals are going to be great for fly control on the farm. Dr. Aniça Amini, Sylvan European Research Manager, gave an overview of Sylvan’s Breeding Research Program. She explained that strain breeding embraced three attri- butes, More, Better and Different. More, as in increased yields. Better, in adapting to the cultural environment, genetic resistance to pests, improvements in qua- lity and to fight the risk of genetic erosion. Different, introducing novelty. Sylvan’s A15 strain is a market leader, but to maintain its market position Sylvan is developing new white strains, LB906 and S176 have been recently patented; and the brown Tuscan and Bavarian Brown strains now available. Strain development is a slow process, Aniça discussed the use of CRISPR-Cas9 techniques to switch off genes in Agaricus which are involved in the production of polyphenol oxidase enzymes which cause browning, but this technique is difficult; other avenues are available
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56
