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| Steps involved
in mushroom cultivation: |
| Pure culture: |
 This
is the tissue of the mushroom. The tissue culture
technique is used to bring the edible mushroom
to pure culture so that the mushroom fungus can
further be used to prepare spawn, which is an
essential material for mushroom cultivation. This
is the nucleus culture to prepare the mother spawn.
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| Mother Spawn: |
 |
Mother spawn
is nothing but the mushroom fungus grown on a grain
based medium. |
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| Bed spawn: |
| Bed
spawn is used as seed for preparing bed. It is prepared
from mother spawn. |
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| Bed preparation: |
 In
the cultivation of oyster mushroom and milky mushroom
most cellulosic farm waste is used as substrate.
These include paddy straw, corncobs, bagasse,
banana leaves, leaf litters of various kinds,
waste paper, cotton waste etc., Among them, paddy
straw is found to be the best substrate giving
more bio efficiency. Paddy straw is chopped into
bits of size2-3” for easy handling and operation.
And it is completely sterilized to prevent from
contamination. Layer bed method is used for preparing
beds. |
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| Casing soil: |
 For
milky mushroom casing soil has to be applied at
the top for the growth. This casing soil is sterilized
and then the spawn run bed has been cut in to
two halves to apply the casing soil at top. |
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| Cultivation: |
 After
casing operation the beds should be arranged inside
the Blue polythene covered pit tent for the growth
of the mushroom. The fungus requires an optimum
temperature of 30-35° C and relative humidity
of 80-85 per cent for the better growth and production
of sporocarp. In addition, the fungus needs a
light intensity of 2500- 3000-lux for production
of buttons, and the cased beds should be kept
inside the blue tent. Optimum temperature and
Relative humidity has to be maintained for high
yield. |
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| Harvesting: |
| Once
the mushroom is grown well it has to be harvested
at mature stage or else weight loss will be there.
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