CULTIVATION TIPS ADVISIE


By Jos Hilkens AdVisie ‘the mushroom growing consultants’, Herkenbosch hilkens@mushroomconsulting.nl


Automated harvesting: multiple challenges As one year ends and another year begins, it’s traditional to look back and look ahead. The same applies to the European market for fresh mushrooms. We saw that 2025 was a noticeably difficult year for sales. Market prices are under pressure, while the costs occurred by growers continue to rise sharply. Labour costs have risen significantly and the costs of raw materials, other variable inputs and maintenance are also continuing to climb. Consequently, the cost price per kilo of mushrooms has increased by 10 to 15 eurocents this year, while sales prices have, at best, remained flat. These factors are placing considerable pressure on growers’ profit margins. This raises the always difficult question for growers with limited space for mushroom production: continue or cease? It is becoming increasingly difficult to generate a decent income from mushrooms. Larger-scale growers are therefore actively looking at ways to increase their viability in the future. These options include implementing harvest automation on existing farms but also optimising the design of growing and harvesting rooms to integrate automation in new build projects. Automated harvesting delivers masses of data that can be used to quickly and easily adapt the harvesting process and planning to further optimise the yields and results. Automating the harvest is often seen as the way forward to make structural improvements, however, it is proving to be more complex in practice. Technical constraints, high investments, losses due to downtime and the inherent fragility of mushrooms make a rapid, large-scale rollout of automation challenging. And in economic terms, it is also difficult to make a conclusive business case at the moment. However, a steadily growing and major concern is the structural shortage of motivated and experienced employees. And that is precisely where automation can make a difference. Depending on the specific situation you start from and which systems are chosen, labour savings of 45% on pickers are currently feasible. Further automation can potentially cut costs even more. Labour savings are often the decisive factor when considering expansion even though harvest automation alone will be break-even in financial terms. Please contact us if you would like to have a business case drawn up or an independent assessment of your situation.


Recovery growth: a short but vital


By Jos Hilkens AdVisie ‘the mushroom growing consultants’, Herkenbosch hilkens@mushroomconsulting.nl


Photos: AdVisie


cultivation phase The recovery period is an important phase when mycelium grows to the surface of the casing soil. If mycelium has difficulty reaching the surface of the casing, pinheads will form deeper in the casing and their numbers will be more difficult to steer. But, if mycelium grows very vigorously to the surface and the beds become too white, there is a higher risk of too few mushrooms later on due to lower numbers of pinheads, stagnating growth and possible dehydration of the mycelium. Recovery growth usually takes between 24- 36 hours. The actual length depends on the cropping cycle, the amount and quality of the CAC material applied and how coarse the casing soil structure is, watering, the compost and room air temperature, fan speed, cool-down method and more. There are many variables that contribute to achieving optimal results. This tip specifically zooms in on the influence of the compost temperature. At the start of recovery growth, the ideal compost temperature to aim for is 24°C. Growers prefer to start with a low temperature to avoid the compost temperature rising too quickly during the recovery period. The room air temperature is usually set to 20°C with active compost and a maximum of 22-23°C with inactive compost. Within the limits, a high air temperature is better to encourage mycelium to grow quickly to the surface, but how fast the compost temperature increases is even more important. In addition, the fan speed is reduced from 80-100% to 45-60%. The optimal situation is a compost temperature no higher than 26-27°C at the end of the recovery period. This will not cause unnecessary moisture loss at cool-down and pinhead formation is more spontaneous. As cooling activates to maintain the room air temperature at 20°C, wetting the floor once is recommended to create the highest possible relative humidity. Mycelium can then grow more easily to the surface of the casing.


6 MUSHROOM BUSINESS


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