About Verma Mushroom HouseWe Provide Fresh Mushroom For Your Family
Indian agriculture will continue to be the backbone of Indian economy. With variety of agricultural crops grown year around, we have ensured all time highest food supply by producing over 278 million tons of food grains (2017-18). We have significant achievements in milk, vegetable and fruit production but more is required to achieve nutritional security. Increasing population, depleting agricultural land, climate change, water shortage and quality food products at competitive rates are going to be important issues in future. To meet these challenges and provide food and nutritional security to our people, it is important to diversify beyond cereals and pulses diet. Mushrooms are one such component that problems of quality food, health and environment related issues. Moreover this agri-enterprise is not dependent on availability of productive land.
Working of this innovation, in September 2008, Jagdish Chand Verma got seven days Mushroom Cultivation Training at ICAR-Directorate of Mushroom Research, Chambaghat, Solan, Himachal Pradesh and started Button Mushroom (Agaricus bisporus) cultivation with 10 bags in 2009. He slowly raised his mushroom unit upto 200 bags during 2015. In February 2016, with the technical guidance and assistance of Department of Horticulture, ATMA and Krishi Vigyan Kendra, he got a loan from Himachal Pradesh State Cooperative Bank Jhandutta for ₹ 14 Lakh. Further, he got a subsidy of ₹ 8 Lakh from Department of Horticulture, Bilaspur in order to establish his entire project worth ₹22 Lakh.
He constructed three rooms each of 25*15 feet with controlled atmospheric system, with one packing-cum-office room of 25*9 feet. He has kept ACs (1.5 tones, 3.0 tones) and heaters for maintaining temperature between 14-18°C and relative humidity of 80-85 per cent.
At present, he has kept 1350 mushroom compost bags (each of 10 Kg capacity ) @ 450 bags per room at 20 days interval staring from 1st September, 2017. He had purchased these mushroom compost bags from Khan Mushroom Centre Pvt Ltd, Una. According to him, Under optimum temperature and relative humidity, Mushroom picking started after 30-35 days. This farm generated ₹ 3.59 Lakh gross income and ₹ 1.84 Lakh as net income during five months period in this year.
Scaling-out the Innovation:
According to Sh Jagdish Chand Verma, besides selling Button Mushroom in local market, he has prepared mushroom pickle for off-season use and sold 35 kg pickle @200 per kg in nearby locality. Till date, he had not faced any problem in successful cultivation of mushroom, He has not only self-employed his family members, but also provided employment to 5-10 rural youths. He is having one of the biggest mushroom units in the district and is acting as an ambassador for the farming community. His experiences need to be replicated in other areas for proceeding towards doubling farmers' income and achieving rural development goals of the government.
Significance
Indian diet is primarily based on cereals, which is deficient in protein. Supplementation of mushroom recipe will definitely bridge proton gap and improve general health conditions. It is considered to be a nutritious food and suitable for all age group Mushrooms are generally consumed in different forms like soup powder, biscuit, nuggets ketch-up, candy murabba (preserve), pickle and chips in additions to their use as vegetables. They are rich in protein, dietary fiber, vitamins (especially B and C) and minerals (K, Na, P, Cu, Zn and Mg). Being edible fungi, it promotes immune function, boosts health, lowers the risk of cancer, inhibits tumour growth, helps in balancing blood sugar, wards-off viruses, bacteria and fungi, reduces inflammation and supports the body's detoxification mechanisms. Presently, Europe, America and East Asia contribute about 96 per cent of the world mushroom production. In India, mushroom production is 1,20,000 tons per annum, whereas, it is as high as 21 million tones in China. In our country, button mushroom is cultivated predominantly in Punjab, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra. In Himachal Pradesh, its cultivation is taken up on large scale by some of the innovative farmers. Sh. Jagdish Chand Verma of district Bilaspur HP is one of such farmers.
Uniqueness:
Mushroom cultivation has been started in the past by very large number of new entrepreneur. However, there has always been very high rate of attritions due to various reasons. The strongest reason out of several such reasons is small size of enterprise and very small proportion of family income being derived out of mushroom cultivation. Mr. Verma, however, had aspired for taking mushroom cultivation to economically viable levels of scale and became the only large scale and serious mushroom grower in his district.