Description

Edible mushrooms like Pleurotus are known to be among the largest of fungi. Mushrooms have been universally recognized as food and it is a nutritious delicacy grown on commercial scale in many parts of the world including Nigeria.

Mushroom cultivation serves as the most efficient and economically viable biotechnology for the conversion of lignocellulose waste materials into high quality protein food.

Nigeria is richly endowed with good quality mushroom like Pleurotus and Agaricus genera which can be mass-produced for local consumption as well as for international market. It contains many vitamins and minerals but very low on sugar and fat. It can be grown in a temperature between 20 and 30°C and required relative humidity is 55 to 75%.

Mushroom is a nutritious source of vegetarian food. It is a major horticulture product all over the world and is becoming popular in Nigeria. Mushrooms are a natural product with many nutritional and medicinal advantages. Mushrooms are good as nutritious food for all ages and under all conditions of health. They are cholesterol free and in its place ergo-sterol is present which gets converted to vitamin D by the human body and contain virtually no fat or sodium.

Mushrooms supply dietary fibre and are a good source of several important vitamins B and C such as thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, biotin, pantothenic acid. Mushrooms are rich in good quality proteins with lysine and tryptophan that are normally deficient in cereals.

The carbohydrates in the mushrooms are at a level of 4.5 to 5.0 per cent but are in the form of glycogen, chitin and hemicellulose instead of starch. The fat content is as low as 0.3 % but is rich in linoleic acid, an essential fatty acid.

For long-term storage of mushrooms, canning, pickling and drying processes are employed. The quality of the preserved product is rarely comparable with that of fresh mushrooms. Dried and Canned mushrooms are convenient for long-term storage and transportation.

The project is both technically and economically viable. The production technology is simple and the equipments are locally fabricated. The raw materials are readily available.

The production plant comprises of Pasteurizer, Refrigerator, Vertical Band Sealing Machine, Weighing Machine, Accessories, Generator and Project Vehicle.

The raw materials required for production are Sawdust, Spawn and Lime. One (1) kg of spawn is needed for thirty (30) kg of sawdust and the quantity of lime needed is two percent (2%) of quantity of sawdust.

The farm would produce four thousand, eight hundred (4,800) kg of fresh mushrooms bi-monthly at eighty percent (80%) of the installed capacity and the farm would operate for three hundred (300) working day per annum. Two hundred (200) grams dried mushrooms is equivalent to two (2) Kg of fresh mushrooms.

This report seeks to examine the financial viability or otherwise of establishing a edible mushroom farm in Nigeria.