Diseases and Management of Crops under Protected Cultivation

(Diseases and Management of Crops under Protected Cultivation)
composting with at least 3 quintal wheat/rice straw.
The high-tech crop rooms are insulated and built with manual or semi-automatic operating
systems to maintain the range of temperature, humidity and air circulation as required by the
crop. The dimension of cropping room is determined by the amount of compost to be filled into
rooms. Generally 60x17x13 ft volumetric space accommodates 20-25 ton compost when
cultivation is done in shelves or bags. High-tech growing rooms are well equipped with
insulated boundaries (walls and roof), insulated doors/vents, light arrangement, water
connections, drainage channels, racks, air handling units etc.
e. Substrate preparation: Unlike the vegetables, mushrooms are heterotrophic in nature and
capable to draw nutrition from lignin and cellulose based organic substrates. But due to inherent
variations for the requirement of carbon and nitrogen and different biologic demands of
mushroom species they need selectivetechniques of substrate preparation with identical C:N
ratio and pH. In cultivation of about all major edible and medicinal mushrooms generally wheat
straw and paddy straw are one of the major substrates.Agaricus bisporus grows on compost
made by these substrates. However, Pleurotus prefers a crude un-composted fresh
substrate.Lentinulaedodesfavours the medium that contains saw dust. In the same way other
mushrooms prefer different technology of substrate preparation.
f. Crop Husbandry and Protection:Crop husbandry of mushroom starts from spawning to
disposition or reuse of spent mushroom substrate. In between them spawn run, casing,
CAC’ing, pinning, thinning, cropping, picking, diseases and insects management are other
important steps which have to employed successively along with needful adjustment in
temperature and humidity inside the crop rooms.
g. Post-harvest Management:Mushrooms are highly perishable in nature and get spoiled very
soon at ambient temperature. High moisture content, fleshy and succulent body texture,
enzymatic browning and bacterial infection are the major causes of reducing quality postharvest
life of mushrooms. Such mushrooms are loose in colour, toughness, flavour and aroma
and thus not find suitable both for meal and sale. To extentpost-harvest life of mushrooms
several techniques and practices have since been developed. Sun drying is one of the simplest
and oldest methods followed by the growers from the time immemorial. New preservation
techniques like canning, pickling, mechanical and chemical drying (freeze drying, fluidized bed
drying, batch type cabinet drying, osmotic drying, oven drying) and irradiation treatment of
mushrooms are developed to strengthen the post-harvest life of mushrooms (Wakchaure,
2011).
h. Recycling of spent mushroom substrate (SMS): SMS is a remaining organic substrate of
mushroom production industry that left after full crop of mushroom has been harvested. It
loosely stipulated to the spent compost of button mushroom but all growing mushrooms
produce their own kind of fresh SMS with different biological, chemical and physical properties.
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