Mushrooms in Ghana

Cultivated oyster mushrooms

It's usually not good when fungi make it to the news. This week has been no exception: the two notable stories that circulated the web recently were that 15 people got mushroom poisoning in Serbia (fortunately, it was not fatal), and a man in Ohio mutilated himself while high on magic mushrooms, while claiming that "mushrooms made him do it". Evil mushroom alert! Run for your lives!!! Yeah, right.

Thankfully, it is not all doom and gloom. Offsetting these is a story about mushrooms growers in Ghana who cultivate oyster mushrooms, but were experiencing shortage of suitable spawn. The difficulty with it is that it needs to be prepared in sterile conditions, and the existing laboratory facilities in Accra, at Food Research Institute, did not produce enough. Therefore, a research project at Techiman was looking at expanding farm production to include a second crop, shiitake. The project started in 2011 and is now almost ready to supply the 7,000 mushrooms growers in the country with the spawn and logs.

Cultivated shiitake

It's great news for the farmers, as with two crops instead of one they'll be able to reach their full economic capacity. This means less poverty, and more great food for their buyers. Now, these are mushrooms I totally approve of.

Link to the original story - Mushrooms in Ghana

Image credits:
Oyster mushrooms
Shiitake mushrooms