Craving for mushroom turns into a thriving agribusiness

By Sosimo Ma. Pablico

Eleven years ago, a mechanical engineer in San Leonardo, Nueva Ecija craved for mushroom but was not able to buy any because no one was culturing it.  This prompted him to look for mushroom spawns instead so that he would produce the mushrooms himself.

For a number of years in between his busy schedule as a construction contractor, Jack Nagano continued asking people where he could buy the spawns but no source could be found.  After five years, he was invited to attend a three-day seminar on mushroom production and he offered his resort as the venue of the seminar.

Unfortunately, he did not learn much from the seminar which consisted only of lectures and some demonstration.  “The seminar was half-baked and what were taught actually appeared difficult to follow,” he recalls. 

Two years later in July 2003, his son Francis attended a one-week training on mushroom production at the TLRC (Technology and Livelihood Resource Center) in Makati.  This time, Jack was lucky for his son not only learned the technology they needed; he was also one of the trainees who successfully produced uncontaminated mushroom spawns.

Francis’ success prompted Jack and his wife, Belen, to buy materials for mushroom production a month later.  Jack also constructed an isolation chamber, converted their guest room into a laboratory, and prepared a pasteurization area and a small growing area at the backyard of their house in Congressional Village in Quezon City. 

In September 2003, Francis started producing mushroom spawns.  The first spawns he produced, however, were all contaminated.  The Naganos then realized that growing mushrooms is not a piece of cake after all.  But the family refused to give up even if it took Francis 60 trials before he came up with a good and uncontaminated spawn. 

Thereafter, Francis experimented on the mixture of the medium for the fruiting bags and how to make them produce mushrooms at their backyard in Quezon City.  But he realized that what he learned from the TLRC seminar was not enough and so he attended seminars at the Bureau of  Plant Industry in Malate, Manila, and at the Mushroom Center of the Central Luzon  State University in Nueva Ecija.

That was the seminar where he really learned how to mushrooms.  In early 2004 the family already decided to move their production to a mushroom house in San Leonardo with a floor area of 300 square meters, includes a cooling room, inoculation room, incubation room and growing area for 12,000 fruiting bags.  The spawns are brought from Quezon City a day before planting.  .

Starting with 250 fruiting bags of Angel mushroom (Pleurotus florida) a week with a survival rate of 80 percent, they soon expanded to 1,000 fruiting bags a week.  Angel mushroom is a tropical species and can be grown under the high temperature of Nueva Ecija.

However, the locals preferred kabuteng dayami, the only edible mushroom they knew.  They were afraid to eat it at the start.  To prove that Angel mushroom is edible, Belen concocted  mushroom food preparations like burger and tempura, which she gave to neighbors and relatives for free.  She also developed other preparations without meat like kare-kare, goto, sisig, and soup.

A kilo of fresh mushroom cooked into tempura costs P300.00.  The tempura weighs only 600 grams.  It is now a favorite of their customers and guests.  A kilo of fresh Angel mushroom sells at P150.00 and marketing it is no longer a problem.

By early 2005, the Naganos were already producing ganoderma, considered the oldest mushroom used in medicine and one of the most respected mushrooms today.  It has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for more than 4,000 years for treating liver disorders, hypertension, arthritis and other ailments.  A pack of dried ganoderma chips, 100 grams, sells at P500.00.

The Nagaño Farm now also sells Angel mushroom spawns at P70.00 a bottle.  Small orders can be served in one week, but large orders like 1,000 bottles could be served only after one month.

(Readers may reach columnist at spablico@yahoo.com. For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/harvest-time/ For reactions to this column, click “Send MESSAGES, OPINIONS, COMMENTS” on default page.)

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