Mushrooms are a power house of nutrition. Edible mushrooms are fleshy and fruit bodies of several species of macro fungi.
The fungi have bearing fruiting structures that can appear either below the ground or above ground whereby they may be picked by hand. Mushroom is not a rain fed crop and requires little growing space. For high yields, the key is the right planting material called spawn.
Adding shelf life
Mushrooms have a shelf life of not more than five days after harvesting. Thus the produce has to be modified to be more durable through some transformation processes such as slicing mushrooms and drying them in the sun for 2-3 days.
The mushrooms can be dried using solar dryers which is more efficient than sun drying. Grinding of mushrooms is done using hammer mills into powder then stored and can be added to any food.
Varieties and nutrients
Mushroom varieties include the oyster mushroom, the barton mushroom and genodama. The genodama mushroom is only consumed in its powder form for its medicinal purposes and is usually done by mixing one teaspoon of the powder with one glass of water.
Mushroom has high nutrients, rich in proteins, has good minerals and does not have cholesterol thus adds value to other foods that lack these characteristics.
Benefits
The genodama mushroom has the following benefits; it improves the immune system, lowers blood pressure, lowers blood cholesterol, cures allergies and insomnia, slows the aging process and improves the skin.
Finally, you need timber, green house polythene paper and shred nuts in order to form a rack for drying mushrooms before grinding them into powder for packaging.
