When I was a child, during keeping cattle, I used to eat mushroom commonly known as Enguday. When we children had found mushroom, we became happy and dance digging the ground. In fact, I had practiced eating wild mushroom in my childhood, so did the others. Indeed, Enguday has been recorded still in our mind especially the one that had been grown at rural areas.
Still, I remember especially the sweetness of a little liquid on the tip of mushroom while we had roasted it. Off course, many singers and lyric writers have utilized the word Eguday for esthetical purposes. Evidences show that Ethiopia has diversified and suitable environment to grow different varieties of mushroom successfully. Hence, it has been known to use few wild and voluntary grown mushroom verities as sources of foods by the rural community living in humid and forest areas of the country. However, still fungal food resource is at lower level.
Wild mushroom consumption is a traditional common practice among different tribes in Ethiopia (especially in South and Southwest like Kaffa ethnic groups) have been used for their nutritional, traditional, medicinal properties and as copping food shortage periods. But still the food and medicinal values of mushrooms have been undermined due to bad impressions (Refer it as “YejibTila” or “Hayena’s Umbrella”) Although the history of mushroom cultivation has long period of time in the world, it counts shorter period in Ethiopia.
Due to this, people have less understanding i.e knowledge, attitude and skills of mushroom production. Many challenges can be mentioned behind the issue; high cost of input materials (spawn), low productivity due to poor cultivation techniques, poor feeding habit of mushroom on the society, loss due to contamination, pests and diseases, poor post-harvest handling practice. Furthermore, less attention for this sector by government and viewed as a minor farm activity for long time, limitation of research, extension (Technology dissemination) and adoption works can be mentioned.
Lack of: enough skills and experience among mushroom cultivators, coordinating marketing system, shades (work place) in the city, quality spawn and, poor hygienic conditions around the growing environments, and specialization are the other ones, The last but not the least, lack of: national quality control mechanisms and safety assurance, awareness of the mushroom processing technology and value addition of the products besides drying, and promotion of mushroom on media.
Taking this in to account, Ministry of Agriculture have established national mushroom platform involving different ministries, universities, nongovernment development partners and private entrepreneurs. According to Abdella Negash, horticulture development director, it need to further develop the role of mushroom in food security, complementing gaps in food nutrition and creating additional jobs for women and youths dwelling in urban and rural areas of the country.
As to the director, mushroom production has short length of growing period so that the crop cycle can reach three times per year comparing to the experience of other countries. Mushroom production requires small space and capital to start; and commercial mushroom production requires intensive management practices as the result it requires high labour, Abdella said.
The director added, though mushroom production has a great role in creating jobs for youths, limited efforts made by few voluntary private entrepreneurs found in big cities such as Addis Ababa, Adama, Bahirdar, Mekelle and Hawassa who are engaged in Spawn production, distribution and homestead mushroom producers since recent times. Apart from low awareness in using mushroom as part of the daily diet absence locally, the people have negative impact in promoting and expansion of mushroom business, he said.
Moreover, due to the absence of research and extension in mushroom farming and production packages are remain at the infant stage, Abdella indicated. Consequently, national mushroom platform has been formed to strengthen the sector into full production scale throughout the country. Based on this, the expected outputs from this established platform are; to identify development partners to be included in the platform, to decide quarter and annual meeting of platform members, as to the director.
Steering and technical committee has been nominated that is responsible to develop organizational structure of the platform, identify and formulate duties and responsibilities of the intended national mushroom steering committee. Accordingly, one spawn multiplication center is established here in Addis by the government. It is important to encourage mushroom growers and cultivators in identifying problems and give possible solutions, increasing manpower (mushroom experts) and in many other aspects.
In addition, field visit, promote through media, enhancing the feeding habit of mushroom, regular follow up and supervision of cultivators, organizing workshops and exhibitions, and establish market chains to connect producers and consumers. Mushroom cultivation research and development has started lately in Ethiopia i,e in 1993 at Addis Ababa University.
Small-scale mushroom growing enterprises start to emerge like Africa Mushroom Company PLC and Spawn making laboratories in Addis and other parts of the country (e.g.Afro Enguday Seed Laboratory PLC). Therefore, we should popularize mushrooms in expanding the market to increase consumption. Since no large-scale mushroom farms so far, mushroom has been mostly imported from (China, Italy, Korea, USA, UAE, Netherlands, Malaysia, Denmark, Switzerland, France, Belgium, and Japan).
Commercial farming is still not that much developed (Household production to Small-scale farming). It is expected from all stakeholders to promote largescale mushroom farms for domestic and export markets, facilitating the establishment of Mushroom Growers Association in Ethiopia.
The Ethiopian Herald April 21/2019
BY BAHIRU SETEGENE
