Pre-wetting of Legro casing.
First flush of whites and browns at Champetit.
Champetit, Louveira The manager, Rodrigo Ricardo Marcolino showed us around the farm which was constructed in 2016 and produces about 30% of the button mushrooms in Brazil. The farm has currently 8 shelf rooms and there are plans to increase this to 12. The farm produces about 10 tonnes of button mushrooms per week with a workforce of 36. The mushrooms are marketed throughout Brazil. Shelves are filled with Phase 3 blocks obtained from composter Compobras in Castro (Parana State). Each room is filled with 35 tonnes of compost which is prepared from wheat straw, chicken manure, slaughterhouse blood, ammonium sulphate and gypsum. The compost is supplemented at spawning and again at casing using Brazilian soya meal based products. The supplement is mixed into the blocks after filling using a purpose built machine. White and brown mushroom strains obtained by the composter from a Brazilian spawn producer and Amycel (Heirloom) are grown in the same cropping room. The shelves are cased with Legro peat casing which arrives on the farm in compressed 50 litre bags. The farm uses 17.5 cubic metres of casing each week. Although Brazilian peat casing is available it is not better in performance or price than the imported Legro casing. Water is filled into the casing bags which are laid out for 24 hours before use. Average mushroom yields are 265 kg per tonne compost harvested in two flushes. Mushrooms are picked at about 30 mm diameter into 200 g punnets. Dry bubble and flies can be problematic, so rooms are cooked out routinely. No pesticides or biocontrol products are approved for use on mushrooms in Brazil.
Selection of mushrooms in a Brasilia supermarket.
The authors would like to thank Innovate UK Business Connect for the Climate Smart Agriculture Partnership Award that funded this study.
36 MUSHROOM BUSINESS
The Future Transporting colonised substrates over huge distances in a hot climate has limited the uptake of mushroom cultivation in remote places in Brazil. Low-cost production methods using local raw materials are needed. Although progress has been made in adapting substrate formulations to availability of local raw materials, there is still a wide range of available materials that have not been fully investigated. Examples include the use of by-product seed meals from various crops for use as substrate supplements. Finding sufficient workers is challenging for farms that are remote from built-up areas. Improved picking efficiency and increased automation such as bulk shelf filling with substrates is needed. Fresh mushrooms are still too expensive for most Brazilians and other protein sources such as eggs and meat are cheaper. The main challenge is to reduce the costs of mush room production so that they are competitively priced.
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