By Our Reporter
SHILLONG: The state has taken an ambitious step to scale up the production of mushroom to 5000 metric tonnes in five years while choosing to empower famers for the plan.
The Agricultural Department will make an investment of Rs 50 crore in 136 villages over a period of five years categorising cultivation of button mushroom in 33 villages, 70 villages for oyster mushroom and 33 villagers for shitake mushroom.
At present, the state produces 27 metric tonnes of mushroom annually.
With a purpose to promote mushroom as an ancillary economic activity in rural Meghalaya, the department of Agriculture launched the Mushroom Mission at All Saints’ Hall in the city on Monday.
According to Agri-cultural Production Commissioner, K.N Kumar, mushroom production is a lucrative option available to the farmers which needs to be examined carefully.
The cultivation of mushroom is seen as environmentally sustainable, it is also an excellent source of protein and vitamin D, mushroom can be used as a backyard activity and require very small landmass for their production, mushroom also fetches very good price.
“Mushroom cultivation is also women-friendly and not very heavy to deal with. It would be great for us to promote mushroom as women-friendly or gender friendly activity,” he said.
In the draft of the mushroom mission document, types of mushrooms such as button mushrooms, shitake and oyster mushroom are included.
“Another reason is that Meghalaya’s climatic condition is highly suitable for mushroom cultivation. In each of the five agro-climatic zones, we have some kind of a mushroom that grows very well,” Kumar said.
At the same time, he shared a vision of the department to set up a high-tech mushroom cultivation farm as 100 per cent export oriented farms.
“There are farmers who are willing to undertake the exercise in a mission mode,” he added.
Besides underlining the importance of mushroom as dietary option to reduce the dependence of red meat for protein, Kumar said the aim to launch the mushroom mission is to create adequate infrastructure in the government sector and also to build the capacity and skills of the mushroom farmers for a long period of time.
Focus areas
Button mushroom will be focused in 33 villages of three districts of Meghalaya – East and West Khasi Hills and South West Khasi Hills. Oyster mushroom will be focused on 70 villages of seven districts and shitake mushrooms will be introduced and the department will experiment the mushroom.
“Shitake is not a fully developed technology for us, we have to learn a lot about shitake, though it is available in the wild in some form or the other, though we are not sure whether they are edible. We have to cross check the availability of wild mushroom,” Kumar said.
“We are looking at Khatarshnong block of East Khasi Hills district as the pilot district for the introduction of Shitake mushroom,” he added.
Meanwhile, Agriculture Minister Banteidor Lyngdoh expressed concern that the investment in mushroom cultivation is not very high and fund can be mobilised by the department for the purpose.
According to him, the high production of mushroom will enable the farmers to export them to other places in India and also sufficient for domestic production.
