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Your Browser is Outdated Because you are not using a modern browser you will not have access to all of Scribd's features. Please consider upgrating to a modern browser: Close This Message Launching Mushroom Biotechnology In GoaByDr. Nandkumar M. Kamat,Asst. Professor,Department of Botany, Goa University(first published in BuildArenaGoa)

With the arrival of monsoons, the mushroom season is here. M/s Zuari Foods andFarms pvt. ltd. managed by food technologist Dr. Sangam Kurade has set up a modernButton mushroom plant at Bhatapal Canacona. Mushroom biotechnology has enteredGoa with this factory. With a capacity of 600 MT per year, these cultivated mushroomsare marketed all round the year. They have captured Pune, Mumbai, Bangalore andChennai markets. There is great potential in Goa for bioindustries based on mushroomtechnology. I have been working since 1986 on edible mushrooms of Goa. This gave mean opportunity to learn about the local knowledge of wild mushroom diversity and practice the technology of a few cultivated species. Edible mushrooms are very popular in Goa but there is poor knowledge among the consumers about these species, their ecological and biological aspects. During my 25 years of research I have recorded about100 different species of edible mushrooms in Goa. 35 of these species are collected bythe locals from the wild for consumption and only 12-14 species produce a marketablecrop which is sold from July to September. Local species have interesting local names-Olmi or alami, Roenichim, toshali, chochyali, khut or khuti, shiti, shitol , shiringar olmi,shendari, kuski, dukor , surya olmi, tel alami, fuge, bhuifod are some of the commonlocal names. But , scientifically, what are these mushrooms?. The word mushroom isthought to be derived from the French mousseron (muceron), moussee or moss .The

Greeks used the word mykes for mushroom generally, and the science of fungi or mycology, etymologically is the study of mushrooms. In simple words, mushrooms arelarger fungi, or plants without chlorphyll. Mushrooms are fully vegetarian items. Onlyin the natural biopolymers Chitin and Chitosan which occur in their cell walls, themushroom share their chemical properties with the shrimps and crabs. Fungi , unlike the plants can not produce their own food using the sunlight as source of energy. Themushroom fungus exists in a thin, white filamentous stage. Only when it grows and produces a visible, big fruiting structure, we recognise it as mushroom. Just as plants produce seeds within the fruits, the mushrooms produce microscopic seeds calledspores. A single specimen can produce about 2-4 billion spores. Not all of thesegerminate. Those which survive, under wet conditions germinate and give rise to afilamentous stage which is recognised by biotechnologoists as powerful source of biomolecules like enzymes. These filaments are known as mycelium. Each mycelium ismade up of small tubular cells, called hypha. The secret of developing commercialtechnology for cultivating mushrooms depends on understanding the growth of thesehyphae, as the mushroom species completes its life cycle from a spore. A lot of researchhas been carried out in 20 th century, in UK, USA, Holland, France, Japan to domesticatenew species of mushrooms. In India, such research began only after 1950.

Mushrooms are useful fungi :-Over 100,000 fungi are known in the world. Of these more than 3000 are mushrooms.But all are not edible and exploitable. The edibility of mushrooms was discoveredthousands of years ago. Mostly by the prehistoric nomadic humans. A common man cannot distinguish an edible mushroom from a look-alike poisonous variety. So,inexperienced people should not venture out to collect mushrooms. For serious studentsand experts computerised programs, with pictorial keys like Matchmaker (Kendrick,2002,http://www.mycolog.com ) have been developed based on major morphological characters for identification of about 1200 mushroom taxa. Love or hate mushrooms? An american anthroplogist, Wasson has divided the humans into mycophobes (thosewho hate mushrooms) and mycophiles (mushroom lovers). Mycophagy means eatingfungi. Ethnomycophagy deals with tradition of certain cultures to consume fungi, mostlymushrooms. Each country has its own ethnomycophagic tradition. There are myths andlegends about mushrooms. But that could be a separate topic. Mushroom habitats :-Habitat means a house, a fixed location. In nature mushrooms grow wild inalmost all types of soils on decaying organic matter, wooden stumps etc.

Fruitinghabitats are divided according to the substrates on which fruitbodies develop such as:.(1)Humicolous (humus inhibiting) ,e.g. Agaricus campestris, (2)Lignicolous (woodinhibiting) e.g. Pleurotus ostreatus . (3) Coprophilous (dung inhibiting) fungi e.g. Coprinus sp. (4) fungicolous (fungus inhibiting) parasitic or saprophytic eg. Boletus sp.etc. People who traditionally collect mushroom crops from the wild identify their habitatscorrectly. Such collection trips are known as forays and these are immensely popular inthe western world. In Afro Asian countries however, mostly the tribals gather andmarket the wild edible mushrooms. Edible mushrooms :-Like the discovery of the edible plants, the knowledge of edible mushrooms dates back u n i v e r s a l l y t o t h e pre-historic phase of human cultural h i s t o r y . M o r e t h a n 2 0 0 0 worldwide sp ecies of wild edible mushrooms which are gathered from their natural habitats prove the antiquity of the ethnomycophagic traditions .How to identify edible mushrooms?There are no fixed criteria to identify edibility of the wild mushrooms merely from

theknowledge of its habit, habitat or morphology or through simple chemical tests. Butthere are very general criteria which help to distinguish the edible species from the non-edible ones. The criteria includes the following aspects or features:-1.All the established, non-toxic and fleshy species are edible-generally this knowledgeis derived from the time- tested local ethnomycophagic traditions.2.Organoleptic properties (texture, smell, taste etc.). Tough and leathery species are always excluded.3.Idiotypic preferences. The allergy inducing species are excluded.4 . A l l t h o s e species, when consumed in a quantity of 1 0 0 - 2 0 0 g e i t h e r b y f r y i n g o r baking do not cause health disorders.

Mushrooms as choicest food :-Mushrooms form very delicious and choicest food stuffs. The very high nutritive value of edible mushrooms rank these above all the vegetables and most of the legumes and theyare second only to meat .mushrooms provide a rich addition to the diet in the fo rm of proteins, carbohydrates, valuable salts and vitamins. Experiments have proved thatmushrooms are well suited to supplement diets which lack proteins and in sense haverightly been

called vegetable meat. As an illustrative example some of the benefits of Pleurotus ostreatus (Oyster mushroom) are given in the Box 1. Box 1 Beneficial aspects of Oyster mushroomsMushrooms are nutritious :-Mushrooms have a high protein content (19-35% on a dry weight basis) of good quality(all essential amino acids for man including lysine and methionine, which are present in plants in very small amounts). This can be compared to 7.3% in rice, 13.2 % in wheat,39.1 % in Soybean and 25.2 % in milk. Considering the Proteincalorie mal-nutritional problems in underdeveloped countries, mushroom cultivation on commercial scale has been identified as a promising area to guarantee food security in the 21 st century.Mushrooms can be compared more favourably with other crops in terms of yield per unitarea. For example cereals can give an annual yield 3000 to 6000 kg/ha. but mushroomsmay give up to 2 million kg/ha. Furthermore mushrooms have a high proportion of unsaturated fatty acids, are a good source of vitamins such as riboflavin and nicotinicacid and a good source of pantothenic acid as also appreciable amounts of thiamine , folicacid, and ascorbic acid. Mushrooms contain fibre and minerals and are low in calories,sodium, fat and cholesterol. In addition their nucleic acid content is not high to limit their daily use as a vegetable.

Medicinal mushrooms :-Mushrooms are also known for their medicinal properties. These properties are beingaggresively explored by major pharmaceutical companies. Hundreds of patents on bioactive comppounds from mushrooms have been granted. Mushrooms have notable place in folklore throughout the world, and traditions of many cultures, past and present,describe medical effects of variously employed fungi. The most commonly cited, potential edible application of a higher edible fungus appears to be calvacin, a possibleantitumour agent isolated from Calvatia gigantea. Some of the other medicinal properties of mushrooms are as follows: 1.Oyster mushrooms contain 16 % proteins, 54 % carbohydrates, 12%fiber, 4.5 % lipids and 8 % minerals.2. Oyster mushrooms have antitumour , anti-cancer properties and lowerVLDL and cholesterol and hence are recommended for patients withhypertension and cardio-vascular problems.3.Oyster mushrooms have 19 mg of bioassimilable Iron per 100 gms dryweight. A diet of oyster mushrooms boosts blood Haemoglobin.4.In China, Oyster mushrooms in dry powdered form are used to tratlumbao numbness and tendon discomfort.

1). Antibiotic activities - Some of the wood fungi are known to have effectiveantibacterial effects. e.g. Polyporus . Gregory and other scientists screened more than7000 cultures of mushrooms for antitumor activity in rodent tumor systems . Fungi suchas Flammulinav velutipes have also been known to have such properties. Other mushroom species having this property are Clitocybe, Daedalea, Marasmius, Pleurotus sp.etc. 2)Antifungal effects - species like Lentinus edodes , Coprinus comatus and Oudemansiella mucida etc. are known to have relatively high rate of occurrence of antifungal antibiosis.

3) Antitumour effects -the mushroom species having antitumour effects are the major and current antibiotic screening activity. The species like Ganoderma lucidum and G.applanatum have been used from ancient time as mushroom tea because these haveantitumour activity. Some edible species like Lentinus, Morchella , Boletus , Pleurotusostreatus, Auricularia auricula-judae are known to have strong antitumour properties.The reports also suggests that this sources also displayed hypocholesterolemic activities.Mushroom derived chemically compounds associated with antitumour activity and their sources include polysaccharides like lentinan from Lentinus edodes flammulin from Flammulina Velutipes

and a triterpenoid from Poria obliqua , obliquol . Mushroom cultivation :-Mushroom cultivation technology is coming of age with the development of powerful biotechnological tools. Theoretically, it is possible to cultivate all themushroom species. But the basic biology has to be first worked out in a researchlaboratory. Then artificial cultivation is attempted on trial scale. Depending on themushroom species it could take years or decades to develop a new technology. Although,about 2000 wild edible mushroom species from 30 genera are regarded as prime ediblemushrooms, only 80 of these are grown experimentally. Of these 40 are cultivatedeconomically and around 20 cultivated commercially. Only 5 to 6 species are producedon commercial scale (Chang & Miles, 1993). These are (1) Agaricus bisporus(2)Pleurotus ostreatus (3)Volvariella volvacea (4) Lentinus edodes ( 5) Morchella sp .(6). Flammunila velutips . However species like Auricularia polytricha, Pholiota nameko, Russula sp. etc are cultivated in south eastern countries and are highly priced in thosecountries. Japan, Korea, China,

Taiwan, etc. are the leading countries in the production of mushrooms. Total mushroom production world-wide has increased more than 10-fold inthe period of 25 years from about 350,000 t in 1965 to about 4,300,000 t in 1991. The bulk of this increase has occurred during the eighties. A considerable shift has occurredin the composite of genera that constitute the mushroom supply. During the 1979 production year, the button mushroom, Agaricus bisporus , accounted for over 70% of theworld's supply. By 1991, only 37% of world production was A. bisporus . Mainland Chinais the major producer (2,200,000 t or about 50% of the total) of edible mushrooms. Thecountry wise details of production are given in Table 1 Table 1. World production of cultivated edible mushrooms in 1986 and 1991 (Chang1993). Fresh wt (x 1,000 t)S p e c i e s 1 9 8 6 1 9 9 1 I n c r e

a s e ( % ) Agaricus bisporus 1 , 2 1 5 . 8 % ) 1 0 ( 3 7 . 3 0 . 9 Pleurotus s p p . 9 ( 7 . ) 9 1 7 1 . 5 % 4 2 . 6 Lentinula edodes 3 2 0 ( . 7 % ) 6 ( 1 2 % ) 6 4 Auricularia s p p . 9 ( 5 . ) 4 6 5 0 . 9 % 9 0 . 8 Volvariella volvacea 1 7 8 ( 2 % ) 2

( , 2

5 5 %

5 9 )

1 8 ( )

6 % 2 4

1 5 . . 1 5 ( )

4 2 3 4 1 % 1 2

8 5

3 ( 5 ) 4 2 Flammulina velutipes 1 0 0 6 % ) 7 ( 4 ) 8 7 Tremella fuciformis 4 0 ( % ) 1 3 . 3 5 0 . Hericium erinaceus 6 6 1 . % ) Pholiota nameko 2 5 ( 1 % ) ( 0 . ) 6 0 Hypsizygus marmoreus 3 2

. . ( 1 . . 1 4 % 0 ( 5 -

9 1 4 8 4 0 . 0 )

. %

8 ( 2

1 4 9 . (

. 0 % 0

0 . 7 % ) Grifola frondosa 8 ( 0 . 2 % ) O t h e r s 4 9 ( 1 . 2 % ) T o t a l 2 , 1 7 6 ( 1 0 0 . 0 % ) 4 2 7 3 ( 1 0 0 . 0 % ) 9 6 . 4 The technology of domestication of the wild edible mushroom species has evolved fromvery crude initial attempts made by the Chinese in 600 A.D. and over the period of past200 years it has advanced to become a separate area of fungal biotechnology.Mushroom

biologist Dr. Chang (1993) considers mushroom cultivation a complicated business involving a number of operations including the selection of an acceptablefruiting culture. Commercial cultivation involves preparation of spawn and compost,inoculation of the compost, crop care, harvesting, preservation of the mushroom andmarketing. There are a large number of popular books/reviews which give detail accountof these technologies ( Chang and Hayes, 1978; Wood and Smith, 1987; Haque, 1989;Stametes, 1994; Bahl, 1994; Singh, 1996; Pathak et.al., 2000) and the readers arerequested to consult these. Besides the well known Button mushrooms, there is a growingmarket for specialty mushrooms. A review article by Royse (1996) highlights their growing importance. A few of these species are mentioned below. Auricularia auricula Commonly known as wood ear, Auricularia auricula is the first recorded cultivatedmushroom . Auricularia spp. production now represents about 11% of the total cultivatedmushroom supply world-wide. Auricularia auricula and A. polytricha commonly are produced on a synthetic medium consisting of sawdust, cotton seed hulls, bran, and other cereal grains or on natural logs of broad-leaf trees. For cultivation on

natural logs,members of the oak family (Fagaceae) are preferred, but many other species of both hardand softwoods may be used. Ganoderma lucidum Known as reishi or mannentake to the Japanese and Ling Zhi to the Chinese, G. lucidum is renown for its medicinal properties. Reishi often is associated with health andrecuperation, longevity, wisdom, and happiness. It is believed that certain triterpenes and polysaccharides may account for the multiple activities of Reshi. Most cultivation of G.

ster mushroom production increased from 169,000 t toded in India . Of these the literatureGoa. The agriculture department launched a centrally sponsoredbrowning, offflavour development etc (Pathak et.al.,2000). Somee p

freezing0% salt solution. I n v i n e g a r odium or Potassium metabisulphite solution. S u n d r y i n g dration using an oven or drier r e e z e - d r y i n g y i n g a n d s a l t i n g n n i n g a n d b o t t l i n g klingshrooms, 1991. Proc. Of National symposium onD.J. 1996. Specialty mushrooms. p. 464-475. In: J. Janick (ed.), Progress iness, Arlington, VA., Norris J.R. and Pettipher G.L. (eds.), John Wileyment of Agriculture. 1994. Mushrooms. Agricultural Statistics Board.urvey of agriculture-2002, The Hindu, Chennai.etes Paul. (2000). Product catalogue of Fungi Perfecti. Olympia, WA, 98507,http://www.fungi.comhttp://www.faostat.orgIntro ducing Mushroom Biotechnology in Goa-By Nandkumar Kamat This is a short review article on edible mushrooms, the edible species found in Goa and the commercial prospects of edible mushroom cultivation