Mushrooms are the boon to save the Planet from all the excesses that Humans are perpetrating on Mother Earth.
I am not a mushroom expert but I remain a curious observer of mysteries of life on our planet & am enchanted with the possibilities & potential of mushrooms in all walks of our lives.
I am sharing this from what I assimilated in last 30 years when I embarked upon a project to grow Button Mushrooms for exports to North America.
As I traversed the commercial path to make a living from mushrooms & earning precious forex from exports; my quest remains unsatiated to explore the wider arena of the mystical Fungi !
When we talk of Mushrooms we think only of the edible mushrooms like Buttons, portobellos, oysters, shiitake & many more.
There are many medicinal & therapeutic mushrooms like Reishi, Cordyceps, Chaga & Turkey Tail that are considered as the unmatched source of healthy foods and drugs.
These have great therapeutic benefits for human health as they possess many properties such as anti-diabetic, anti-cancerous, anti-obesity & anti-aging.
As if all above goodness is not enough ; there are awesome new developments to use the mushroom mycelium as the janitor of all ills created by non-degradeable garbage & green house gases.
A few years back, the students at Yale University found Pestalotiopsis in the rainforests of Ecuador; the first fungus that not only has a voracious appetite for plastic but can thrive in oxygen-starved environments like landfills.
Enormous entrepreneurial sources are groping worldwide to discover new possibilities of mushroom mycelium & its potential to replace plastics, animal leather & timber for furniture.
In this article; I am restricting to the edible mushrooms of Agaricus Bisporus family & if you like it; I shall keep sharing the wonders of mushrooms & mycelium as I traverse through this exciting journey.
So, let me begin with what we all understand as edible mushrooms.
Mushrooms are fungi. They are neither plants nor animals. They are different from
Plants and animals in the way they obtain their nutrition to grow.
Plants use Sun energy ( photosynthesis) to make their food and animals eat & digest to get their nutrition.
Fungi do neither; their mycelium grows into or around the food source, secretes enzymes that digest the food and the mycelium then absorbs the digested nutrients to expand.
Agaricus bisporus( commonly known as Button mushrooms) is the most popular, most available and amongst the most affordable mushrooms today. It is the most familiar mushroom for most of us sold in grocery stores and put on pizza. It comes in various forms: white button versions, brown versions (Crimini) and large portobello versions.
Agaricus B varieties grow on conditioned & pasteurised agro waste like Straw, chicken manure & gypsum.
Imagine how the paddy straw that has become the culprit of all the smog in NCR can be gainfully used to grow mushrooms !
It’s grown in controlled temperatures & humidity in dark insulated rooms without sunlight.
The Mushrooms are Superfood with very high quality & easily digestible protein. Mushrooms are therapeutic with enormous benefit to prevent and cure several modern day ailments like Obesity, Diabetes, Heart & Cancer.
And lastly; Mushrooms are as vegetarian as Potato or Pumpkin is ! They can be considered vegetarian and vegan because they are not animal or animal-derived. Use of chicken manure for source of nitrogen does not make it chicken derived as the same manure is also used in various vegetables.
Make them part of your regular meals to experience the new kick in your life !
Wishing you Happy Mushroom Discoveries !
