16 July 2014
In 2010,
Puthkiri inherited a 5,000-square-metre mushroom farm on the outskirts of Phnom
Penh from his brother, who had been trained in South Korea in the art of
raising the broad-topped oyster variety, a popular Chinese soup ingredient.
New to
mushroom farming, Puthkiri wanted to diversify his produce, and raise the more
dense straw mushroom, a bulbous fungus with greater appeal in Cambodian cuisine.
And the training was effective. While Puthkiri looks after marketing and sales,
his wife provides the technical advice, and three years on, they have built up
two oyster mushroom growing houses and 17 straw mushroom growing houses, that
combined, produce more than 3,000 kilograms of fungus each month.
Puthkiri’s
mushrooms are sold to Cambodian restaurants and organic vegetable stores run by
the Cambodia Center for Study and Development in Agriculture (CEDAC). And just
recently, Puthkiri signed a contract to supply 50 kilograms of mushroom per day
to a Japanese food distributor servicing Japanese restaurants in Cambodia.
Growing
mushrooms is an intricate process for beginners according to Puthkiri. Mushroom
spawn is combined with organic material such as straw or saw dust, and then
layered in a tray before covering with moss, to keep the fungi moist. Puthkiri
says it takes around 30 to 45 days before the mushrooms can be harvested.
Temperature
too is critical in achieving the greatest yields, and Puthkiri plans to import
technology from Thailand to help control his growing environment as soon as his
monthly harvest is large enough to fund the upgrade.
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