economy

The Ryugyong Mushroom Farm in the suburbs of Pyongyang boosts productivity by developing advanced technologies and introducing a cost-saving production method that relies on substitute materials.

Recycling substrates can be cited as an example.

Substrates take a very important share in producing mushrooms.

The farm previously used substrates, the basis for mushroom production, only once and therefore it cost much to purchase corncobs, the main material for substrates. The farm’s technicians intensified research to recycle used substrates for mushroom production five times. 

The farm now grows Pleurotus eryngii three times and recycles the used substrates to grow several other kinds of mushrooms such as Pleurotus ostreatus two times in the outdoor cultivation ground. In the end, the substrates are fermented to be used as feed for domestic animals.

The technical team of the farm introduced a method of adding cotton seed hull, sawdust and rice chaff to a small quantity of corncobs to be used substitute substrates and used cotton seed cake, whose cost is half as much as that of rice bran and bean cake which had been used as supplementary materials for the production of substrates, as such material, thus raising productivity by 1.3 times as compared with before. 

The farm has markedly increased the mushroom production by adding natural multifunctional mineral nutrient to mushroom substrate or introducing phytosine and other bioactivators in close cooperation with the Central Mushroom Institute.

“A new production method of using heat-resistant plastic bottles increased the weight of mushroom per substrate to more than 150 grams and the mushroom production last year by 1.2 times as compared to the previous year,” said O Kwang Chol, head of the technical preparation room.

Besides, the farm has further improved the sterility of spore culture by adding a new culture process and ensured the temperature, humidity, light and ventilation suitable for mushroom cultivation at outdoor cultivation grounds, thus producing Pleurotus ostreatus without interruption even in winter.