Growing wood ear mushrooms with dwarf napier grass: organic, healthful and zero waste

People in Taiwan, China love mushrooms, but space bags require large amounts of wood chips, and 400 million space bags are used up in a single year domestically. The Mushroom Research and Development Center of National Pingtung University of Science and Technology replaced wood chips with dwarf napier grass to grow wood ear mushrooms, and after 3 years of trials it finally succeeded. The first harvest yield was 130 grams higher than that of wood-chip space bags, and the efficiency of converting space bags into wood ear mushrooms was also 30% higher. Chen Liling, a professor in the Department of Plant Medicine at NPUST, said that dwarf napier grass requires no pesticides, is easy to cultivate and is suitable for revitalizing fallow land, and the used space bags can also serve as compost substrate to feed cattle and sheep, realizing the concept of zero waste.

Conversion efficiency 30% higher than wood chips