Vol. 5, Issue 1 (2017)

Since the ancient time, mushroom has been treated as a special kind of food. In historical ages, mushroom was considered not only a tasty seasoning but also a true and proper food closer to meat and eggs than to vegetable and said to be a complete food in certain instances. The Greeks regarded mushrooms as providing strength to “Warriors in Battle.” The Chinese treasured mushrooms as health food, “The Elexir of life”. In India too, the mushroom has been used as a food, mostly by the tribal people since the earliest times. The low cost simple technology of mushroom may give a good yield during short period of 20-25 days. Rural women will utilize their leisure time by cultivating and processing of mushroom. Marketing is also very important for mushroom due to its highly perishable nature. Packaging, transportation are other important factors before start to this venture.

A study was conducted in 7 districts of Chhattisgarh namely Ambikapur, Bilaspur, Dhamtari, Durg, Jagdalpur, Rajnandgaon and Raipur covering about 20 blocks to examine the level of “Rural Women participation in processing, preservation and marketing of mushroom”. Mushroom is a good food supplement as they contain all essential minerals and vitamins. It provides increased resistance and immunity against early childhood infections and diseases. Mushroom also enhances food security at times of hunger. Women are having knowledge on wild mushroom (Especially women folk and tribes) and can well adopt to cultivate them in limited spaces.

In rural area men control most of the income since old times from farm produce but mushroom can be sold by women and need little capital input, thus attracting more women to this activity. Each operation of mushroom cultivation is a full time enterprise in itself like preparation of bed, spawn production, cultivation, processing, preservation and marketing.

The processing of mushroom is much important because it has a highly perishable character. The study revealed that except drying, the respondents were having low level of knowledge about other mushroom processing techniques. It was also found that Raipur, Durg and Rajnandgaon districts were well ahead in terms of knowledge about mushroom processing. Amongst the tribal dominated districts like Jagdalpur and Ambikapur, the respondents were less aware about mushroom processing and preservation practices, especially in wet processing and knowledge about various instruments, machine required for processing.

The poor status of knowledge about mushroom processing may be because of limited use of such processing practices as most of the respondents are growing mushroom in small units and its outcome may be just enough for their domestic consumption or for sale in local markets as fresh mushroom. The little amount of surplus mushroom was generally preserved by sun drying and was utilized within a week or two. However, the respondents of some progressive districts like Raipur and Durg were having sufficient knowledge about various processing methods. This may be due to their professionalism or big size of production unit. This clearly shows that respondents having high knowledge were ahead in also adoption of processing technologies. Accordingly, recommended that sufficient knowledge of scientific technology is a pre-requisite for adoption of such technologies.

Regarding marketing of mushroom, data revealed that majority (16.4%) of the total respondents prefer to sell their mushroom in local market where 15.4% grower sold their produce through retailers. Remaining 24.3% respondents reported that they sold their mushroom output in some other market of places. Thus, there exists ample scope of processing, preservation and marketing of mushroom in Chhattisgarh.