How to spawn spores for button mushroom production?
Like a seed is to a tree, a spawned spore is to a mushroom. The first point that we need to remember is that mushroom is a living organism. It needs to produce babies too. Junior mushrooms later grow into sizeable mushrooms. Though most button mushroom manufacturers prefer to buy readily available mushroom spawns as it is no less of a hassle to spawn them, but a few producers like us spawn it from scratch as we focus on
maintaining quality standards. So, if you want to know how we do it or are just curious about the details of processes involved then here are the steps –
Spawning techniques for best quality button mushroom production
Step1 – Primary ingredientsinclude wheat, calcium sulphate and calcium carbonate. The first step involves partial boiling of wheat and cooling and drying it. Then the mixture of calcium sulphate and calcium carbonate is mixed with the semi dried wheat. If we talk about the proportions then, with every 1 kilogram of wheat we prefer to ad 20 grams each of Calcium Carbonate and Calcium Sulphate.
Step 2 – Once the ingredients are mixed properly, now it is time to store them in small portions. Storing them in transparent plastic bags for the further processes is ideal for this step. The mouth of the plastic bags should not be sealed completely. Cover it with diaphanous cotton cloth that promotes the exchange of gases. When put into stove top pressure canner machine for the process of sterilization, steam enters into the plastic
bag from its mouth.
Step 3 –After the process of sterilization,mother spawns are selectively added to the Wheat mixture. The mixture works like a breeding ground for the spores that expand and colonise the entire mixture. The process is done under UV light so that the mixture only contains the desirable microbes. UV light destroys any other microbe that can work as a contaminant. The mushroom culture can be availed from any government owned
mushroom culture lab around your area. In India, white buttoned mushroom growers can choose from three to four major variants. Variants like S-11, TM-79 and Horst H3 are the most widely available variants. Each of them has mild difference in flavour.
Once the inoculation process is done,the mushroom needs to be set for a fortnight in complete darkness. This allows the spawns to colonise at a faster pace.
Producing Spawn Mother
Spawn Mothers are the spores from which mushrooms are created. The spores are produced in the gills of the mushroom. There are as many as 40 million spores in the gills of an eight centimetre big white buttoned mushroom. But white button mushroom production can’t just happen from the spores because the spores germinate and turn into mycelium in an unpredictable fashion. So, mushroom producers need the help of laboratories that specialise in commercial production of high quality spawn. These are called spawn mother that are further used in mushroom production process.