Improved cultural practices for button mushroom

New cultural practices with ability to enhance the overall mushroom yield of mushroom have been developed at the Centre which includes:

Mixing of Phosphotika (PSB), biofertilizer in ready to spawn compost @ 0.5% at the time of spawning.  This practice restricts the competitor moulds infection in compost, helps in early spawn run and enhances mushroom yield by 20-25% over control.

Spray treatment of rooting hormone (Veradix-2):  This technique is very cheap and helps in enhancing mushroom yield from 20-30% with major yield during first two weeks of cropping.  The mushroom beds at the time of pinhead initiation have to be sprayed with 0.1% solution of Veradix-2 (Indole butynic acid commercial formulation) of 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd flush.  The practice also helps in shortening the time period required for first harvest and total cropping cycle.

Mixing of bacterial inoculants in casing material and conditioning of pasteurized casing material:  As it has been sited at many places that the casing soil inhabiting microbes exert their effect on mushroom fruiting.  Taking a clue from this we have identified two bacteria, Alcaligenes faecalis and Bacillus megatenum with their ability to enhance button mushroom yield on inoculating them @ 0.1% v/v (10⁸ cell/ml) at the time of casing.  This practice helps in obtaining higher yield of 20-30% of button mushroom.  Similarly, conditioning of FYM and foirpith FYM or coirpith + SMS based pasteurized casing materials at 45-52^oC for 12 housrs help in obtaining higher yield of button mushroom.