Straw can also be used to cultivate edible fungi

In Huojia County, Henan Province, cultivating oyster mushrooms with 1 mu of corn straw can generate an output value of 1200 yuan; cultivating enoki mushrooms can generate an output value of 3500 yuan, and further processing them into enoki mushroom soy sauce and soft-packaged canned food can generate an output value of 30,000 yuan.

Ma Wanfa, founder of the edible fungi base in Dingcun Township, Huojia County, successfully developed technologies for cultivating edible fungi with crop straw as a substitute material and for deep processing of edible fungi using high-tech methods, finding a new way to increase farmers' income.

Ma Wanfa is a top edible fungi technical talent in Huojia County. In 1994, he invested 1100 yuan to establish an edible fungi association, leading farmers to cultivate edible fungi with cottonseed hulls. Later, he found that cottonseed hulls were expensive and yielded low returns, so he developed a high-yield cultivation technology for oyster mushrooms using corn cobs as the cultivation material, raising the input-output ratio from 1:2 to 1:5. In 1997, Ma Wanfa also successfully bred the high-yield oyster mushroom strain "Ma's No. 1," which had one of the higher biological conversion rates among many oyster mushroom strains at the time, and the fresh mushrooms it produced sold for 0.1 yuan per kilogram more than the market price.

In November 2002, Ma Wanfa established an edible fungi base in Dingcun Township. When he saw that the random burning of straw in rural areas in summer and autumn caused environmental pollution, he planned to use crop straw as a substitute material to cultivate edible fungi. So he went to Beijing and Zhengzhou, seeking out research departments, visiting colleges and universities, and looking up scientific and technological materials. He also invested more than 200,000 yuan to purchase scientific research instruments and equipment and began experimental cultivation of edible fungi. Through hundreds of experiments and thousands of improvements, Ma Wanfa finally successfully developed technologies for cultivating oyster mushrooms, enoki mushrooms, and other edible fungi using corn straw. The basic production process is: after crushing the corn straw, add water, lime, wet chicken manure, and other raw materials, undergo high-temperature fermentation, then inoculate and bag for mycelial growth.

Using this technology to build a 200-square-meter greenhouse for cultivating edible fungi can convert the corn straw from 70 mu of land in one year; each kilogram of straw can produce 1 kilogram of fresh oyster mushrooms or 0.15 kilograms of fresh straw mushrooms, and the corn straw from each mu can generate an output value of more than 1200 yuan.

Innovation knows no bounds. Ma Wanfa also boldly carried out research on deep processing of edible fungi. Using the enoki mushrooms he produced himself, he successfully produced soft-packaged enoki mushroom cans and a domestically pioneering extra-fresh enoki mushroom soy sauce, registered them with the National Trademark Office, and obtained barcodes from the China Article Numbering Center. Ma Wanfa thought that if all the corn straw from more than 100,000 mu in the county were used for deep-processed cultivation of edible fungi, it could generate an output value of more than 1 billion yuan. At present, this new technology is gradually being promoted throughout the county.