By Jittra Kittimorakul, WUR THAILAND
Mushroom cultivation in Thailand
Cultivation of mushrooms in Thailand for large scale commercial production started in 1937 with Volvariella, but nowadays, some thirteen species are cultivated. Jittra Kittimorakul gives us an introduction to the current state of affairs in the Thai mushroom sector.
Despite rising
rubber tree saw dust prices and labor costs, this saw dust is still popular with growers.
History Before 1937 Thai people already had mushrooms in their diet, but these were probably collected from nature. Mushroom cultivation in Thailand for large scale production started in 1937, when straw mushroom (Volvariella volvacea) was the first mushroom species that was developed for commercial cultivation. In 1962, large scale pro- duction of oyster mushroom made a start after selection of strains, development of cultivation techniques and transfer of that knowledge to farmers. Later, between 1964 and 1972, other mushroom species such as wood ear mushroom, button mushroom and abalone mushroom also became available for cultivation.
Cultivation methods Nowadays, around 13 mushroom species are cultivated in Thailand. For most of these mushroom species, sawdust of the rubber tree is the most popular one to use as the base sub- strate for cultivation in plastic bags, because rubber tree production is one of the economic pillars of Thai economy. Three types of Oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus eous, P. ostreatus and P. pulmonarius), wood ear mushroom (Auricularia polytricha) and Lentinus squarrosulus, represent the highest economic value, but lingzhi mushroom (Ganoderma luci- dum) and split gill mushroom (Schizophyllum commune) are also cultivated using this method. About 20 years ago, the saw dust was very cheap but nowadays the price is going up because saw dust is also used for making furni- ture. Besides that, the labor cost has also gone up. Nevertheless, it is still popular to use rubber tree saw dust because the growers would not easily like to change their production system. However, for saving production costs and redu- cing contamination, the advised formulation to prepare sawdust substrate in general is to sup- plement 100 kg of saw dust with 8 - 10% of rice
42 MUSHROOM BUSINESS
bran, 1% of calcium carbonate and 0.2% of mag- nesium sulfate. After mixing the moisture content is adjusted to 60 - 70% and put into plastic bags at portions of 800 - 900 g/bag. However, usually growers add anything that is abundantly available and believed to increase yield. In addition to the plastic bag cultivation method, conventional indoor bed cultivation is the most efficient method for growing straw mushrooms. Local farmers in the northern part of Thailand also used this method for growing button mushrooms (Agaricus bisporus) and shaggy mane (Coprinus comatus) in winter season. Bottle and jar culture is also used, but normally for low temperature mushroom species such as king oyster mushroom (P. eryngii), enoki mushroom (Flammulina filiformis) and gold cordyceps (Cordyceps militaris). However, this method requires large investments as it is highly mechanized, including the inoculation process, which drastically reduces labor costs per given yield and uses an advanced climate system to control low temperature for stimula- tion of fruiting body development. Log culture techniques are also used for cultivation of L. squarrosulus and lingzhi mushroom, but only represent an insignificant part of total production.
Four farm types The mushroom farmers in Thailand can be subdivided into four types of companies.
1) Small and local farmers who are only cultiva- ting mushrooms via the plastic bag method. Some farmers can make plastic bag substrate and sell fresh mushroom by themselves, but the others must buy spawns from larger growers with fully colonized to grow mushrooms for sale, and can only sell the yield. Around 72% of mushroom farms are local farmers and sell at
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