Southern States - Tamil Nadu

'Mushrooms have medicinal value'

By Our Staff Reporter

NAGERCOIL MARCH 24. The high nutritive content apart, mushrooms have medicinal value and would help improve the health if taken daily they contained all amino acids required for the body, M. Sugarpon, associate professor of the Kerala Agricultural College, has claimed.

Speaking at a one-day training programme on mushroom cultivation organised for farmers by the Horticultural Department here recently, Dr. Sugarpon said besides being a strength promoter, it has been proven that mushroom was capable of regulating hypertension and was an ideal food for diabetic patients. On the flip side, the mushroom, which once was considered a poor man's diet, has become the choicest delicacy of all classes and hence growing them was commercially viable.

Growing mushrooms was easy and did not require any big financial commitment or involved cumbersome technology, said T. Geetha, associate professor.

A lot depended on how the crop was handled. She said mushroom could be grown in polythene bags stuffed with hay or dry banana fibre and harvested within 12 to 15 days.

Earlier, inaugurating the programme, the Joint Director of Agriculture for Kanyakumari district, S. C. Jeyakumar, said his department has initiated measures to promote mushroom cultivation through the Tamil Nadu Women in Agriculture self-help groups at Seramadam and Mooatrumugam in the district.

The Assistant Director of Horticulture, C. Israel, said mushroom cultivation could be taken as a hobby or kitchen garden and fulfil the domestic requirements.

He called upon farmers to grow the crop as the district had serendipitous climatic conditions.

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