Edible mushrooms are internationally recognized health food, rich in high protein, low fat, low calorie, containing a variety of nutrients needed by the human body, is a staple food with both meat and vegetarian lengths.
China is the world's largest producer of edible mushrooms, with more than 2,500 kinds of edible mushrooms, of which more than 600 can be artificially grown. Edible mushrooms have become the sixth most productive crop after grain, cotton, oil, fruits and vegetables.
On June 5, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs issued the Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Stable Development of the Edible Mushroom Industry in Poor Areas. The opinions pointed out that it is necessary to enhance the stamina of industrial development, strengthen the introduction of key technologies and the integration of key technologies, improve the overall technical level of edible mushrooms, vigorously cultivate edible mushroom products, promote the transformation of retail production to joint cooperative production, actively develop enterprise factory production, and enhance the degree of industrial organization. Industry insiders believe that the guidance will set off a new round of climax in the industrialization of edible mushrooms, and will also promote the development of edible mushroom factories and equipment industrialization.
Three models coexist, but factory is the general trend
In China, as early as ancient times, edible mushrooms have become a delicacy on people's tables. In the past, people directly harvested wild mushrooms to obtain edible mushrooms, but this way of production was inefficient and the food available was extremely limited. At present, most of the edible mushrooms we eat are produced through factories.
In recent years, the author has inspected listed edible mushroom companies such as Xuerong Biology, Zhongxing Mushroom Industry, galaxy biology and other edible mushroom companies or well-known enterprises in the industry, and has also investigated decentralized farmers. The author found that there are three typical planting modes of domestic edible mushrooms: farmer dispersion type, enterprise + farmer type, and factory production type.
Among them, the scattered production scale of farmers is small, the equipment is rudimentary, the output is limited by seasonal factors, the output is low, and there is no scale advantage; the enterprise + farmer type is responsible for technical guidance or input of some equipment by the enterprise, the entry threshold of farmers is low, and the income is guaranteed; the factory production type can realize the concentration, scale, standardization and sustainability of edible mushroom production, and can achieve scale effect.
Bottled grown enoki mushrooms
Chengdu people like to eat hot pot, and enoki mushrooms are one of the must-order dishes. Recently, the author has conducted an in-depth inspection of the production bases of enoki mushrooms in Pengzhou, Chengdu, Qionglai, Dujiangyan and other places. I have been to these areas five years ago, but many of the small retail farmers who grew greenhouses in the last time have withdrawn in large numbers, and some cooperatives have been upgraded to large mushroom factories.
At Xuerong Bio's Pengzhou factory, the person in charge of the plant said that about 70% of retail investors have withdrawn from the market in recent years, mainly because of high labor costs, poor quality of bacteria and low selling prices. According to him, large-scale edible mushroom factories like Snow Banyan Bio are about 40 times more productive than traditional retail cultivation.
In the interview, the author can feel that the factory trend of the edible mushroom industry is very obvious. This industry already has a high technical threshold, coupled with the increasingly high threshold of cost, the later factory will be a major trend. I believe that retail investors can also grow good mushrooms, but it is estimated that not many people can stick to it without cost advantages.
Only specific varieties can be factoryized
When the author investigated large factories such as Xuerong Biological and Zhongxing Mushroom Industry and more than a dozen small chemical factories, he found an interesting phenomenon, that is, although they are all factory production, the varieties produced by factories of different sizes are different, and the edible mushroom varieties suitable for factory cultivation are very limited, about 20 varieties in China. In this way, the production of edible mushrooms can in fact be divided into large-scale production in large factories, small factory production and scattered cultivation by farmers.
The author has seen the most on the assembly line of Snow Banyan Biology and Zhongxing Mushroom Industry is the double spore mushroom, enoki mushroom, true mushroom, apricot abalone mushroom, and bailing mushroom. In the Chengdu area, the production of enoki mushrooms is very large, mainly because Sichuan eats hot pot all year round, and enoki mushrooms are the most commonly used ingredients for hot pot.
Factory production is mainly bottled planting
Of course, as a layman, I could not distinguish the difference between these mushrooms at the beginning, and I learned by consulting the staff on the spot that the varieties produced by the factory were mainly suitable for bottle cultivation. The assembly line of the existing large factory is almost all bottle line. According to Xuerong biotechnology experts, in recent years, there are domestic enterprises in the development of bagging production lines, but the scale and popularity are far less than the bottle lines.
In small chemical factories, that is, small factories that have realized mechanized production in some links, the varieties of production are different from large factories, and the most seen by the author are oyster mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms, black fungus, slippery mushrooms, and other varieties that are not common but have higher market prices.
The person in charge of the factory said that varieties such as bispora mushrooms, enoki mushrooms, true mushrooms, apricot abalone mushrooms, and bailing mushrooms have achieved large-scale production in large factories, the market price is very low, and there is no scale advantage that basically does not make money; while oyster mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms, slippery mushrooms and other niche varieties, the demand is small, the production of large factories is not economical, but the market price is higher, so small factories choose these varieties.
Factory-grown edible mushrooms
It is also understood that varieties suitable for bottles are easy to achieve factory, and there are some irregular shapes of edible mushrooms, varieties that are easy to bruise, and varieties that are not suitable for bottle cultivation must be artificially cultivated. Although large factories can also be cultivated artificially, the cost will be relatively high, so some niche products with high prices are planted in the homes of individual farmers.
Through visiting factories and farmers of different sizes, the author clearly feels that the domestic edible mushroom cultivation, factory is a big trend, but the three models will coexist for a long time, small farmers also have their own comparative advantages, the key is to choose the varieties suitable for their own planting, to avoid positive competition with large factories.
The perfect blend of factory growing processes and equipment
During the investigation, the author learned that there are two modes of factory edible mushrooms: one is the production mode of grass rot represented by the factory production of bisporus mushrooms, and the other is the factory production mode of wood rot represented by the factory production of enoki mushrooms. The author found that the biggest difference between the two production modes is the difference in matrix ingredients, which are not much different in terms of specific assembly line equipment, and the process is basically the same.
Every time I go to a factory, the author pays the most attention to the production process of the factory and the equipment used.
At present, the domestic edible mushroom factory production process learns the technology of Japan and South Korea, and the general process is: preparation - pretreatment - raw material ratio mixing - bottling - sterilization - cooling - inoculation - culture - mushroom management - harvesting and packaging - clearing the warehouse to dig the bottle - drying (preservation).
Factory edible mushroom production
According to the process flow, there are six major steps in the production of edible mushrooms in the factory: substrate equipment, bottling and sterilization, sterilization, mushroom management, clearing and digging bottles, drying (preservation).
In the factory, the prepared raw materials are pre-wet and soaked, and then the pre-wet raw materials are fully stirred and mixed into the automatic mixer according to the proportion. After 1.5 hours of raw material mixing, followed by bottling sterilization, bottling can now be realized with automatic bottling machine, after filling with automatic capping machine capping, with automatic arm machine into the sterilization car, with the sterilization turnover truck to the sterilization furnace, using steam boiler sterilization method. After the sterilization is over, put the sterilized culture bottle in the cold room for cooling, and then put the bacteria after the cold.
Vaccination can now also be automated. After cooling, inoculation is carried out in the culture flask, the inoculation room is purified by millions of air, the operator should be inoculated according to the strict aseptic operation, and after inoculation, the culture bottle will be loaded on a pallet and sent to the culture chamber for culture.
The next mushroom management process is more enjoyable, because this is the process of harvesting. One is to use the automatic bacterium machine to scratch the bacteria; the second is to promote budding, the key to this step is to adjust the appropriate light, temperature, humidity, gas, etc., to promote the bacteria to bud on the surface of the medium, in order to timely produce mushrooms; the third is to pack mushrooms, the length of the mushroom is higher than the bottle mouth 2 cm before the mushroom can be wrapped; the fourth is harvesting and packaging, all suitable for factory varieties in this link can achieve mechanized operations; the last link is drying and preservation, in recent years, the factory has begun the initial and deep processing of edible mushrooms, so drying and preservation has become a new production process.
Domestic edible mushroom factory equipment
The main technical sources of domestic edible mushroom factory equipment are Japan and South Korea, which are close to the varieties grown in China, and the machine can be used. In recent years, the localization process has been very fast, and at present, listed companies in the field of edible mushrooms such as Xuerong Biological, Zhongxing Mushroom Industry, and Galaxy Biology are mainly using domestic equipment.
Domestic edible mushroom planting obviously shows the law and trend of centralized and cluster development, and the corresponding edible mushroom equipment production enterprises also show centralization and industrial clustering, and the planting cluster and equipment cluster have a certain degree of overlap, but it is not completely overlapping.
At present, the main production areas of domestic edible mushroom factory equipment are Shanghai, Jiangsu, Shandong and Henan, of which the last 3 provinces are also the main domestic agricultural machinery industry clusters, which shows that edible mushroom production equipment and traditional agricultural machinery industry clusters also have a certain degree of overlap.
As mentioned above, according to the process flow, there are 6 major steps in the production of edible mushrooms in the factory: matrix equipment, bottle sterilization, sterilization, mushroom management, clearing and digging bottles, drying (preservation), and correspondingly there are 6 categories of equipment, which are connected to the full set of equipment for the factory of edible mushrooms, such as The large edible mushroom production workshop of Xuerong Biological Has hundreds of kinds of equipment, but some small factories do not need so many machines, but the machines in the key links are indispensable. These types of machines can greatly improve the efficiency of the factory production of edible mushrooms, so they need to be introduced.
Bacteria stick production machine. Individual retail households have a high demand for bacteria sticks, and the use of this equipment is also the highest. Usually, a mushroom stick factory can meet the production needs of dozens or even hundreds of individual retail households.
The main function of this type of equipment is crushing, mixing, compression, charging, sealing and other processes, the technical content is not high, and it has completely realized localization.
Bottling, bagging machine. The functions of the fully automatic horizontal bagging machine include bag picking mechanism, bag opening mechanism, blowing mechanism, filling mechanism, top seal, hemp point sealing, cold sealing and other mechanisms, which can greatly reduce the labor of labor, increase 20 to 30 times the labor efficiency, save a lot of labor costs, such equipment has been able to produce domestically, and the cost performance of domestic equipment is outstanding.
The bottling machine mainly completes the functions of feeding, bottling, punching, capping and so on. Bottling is a large labor link in the production of edible mushrooms, and the use of machines can improve efficiency by 30 to 50 times, and is widely used in enoki mushroom and shiitake mushroom planting plants.
The most domestic sales of bottling machines are equipment in South Korea and Taiwan. Under normal circumstances, the first set of equipment of large edible mushroom factories will use imported equipment, but the second phase of the project and follow-up will use domestic equipment. The performance of domestic equipment of the bottling machine is stable, the price has a great advantage, and it can now replace the imported equipment.
Bottle digger. After the edible mushroom is harvested, the bottle is usually recycled, so the old culture medium should be dug out, but the substrate of the edible mushroom is usually glued together with the bottle body, and the manual digging of the bottle is very heavy, and the bottle body is often dug up. The pneumatic bottle digging machine is the use of high-altitude gas to eat the matrix, not only blown clean, high efficiency, but also will not damage the bottle body, so factory production is inseparable from the bottling machine, the second is inseparable from the bottle digging machine. Domestic bottle digging machine can clean 5000 ~ 6000 bottles in 1 hour, and a factory is usually equipped with one to meet the production needs.
Edible mushroom incubator. Edible mushroom incubator is also known as biochemical constant temperature incubator, with humidification, dimming, temperature regulation function, is the key equipment to determine the size of large-scale production in the later stage, this equipment is suitable for all kinds of edible mushrooms and various types of microbial varieties of culture, through the creation of a small environment to improve the growth environment of strains. The existing equipment is automatically controlled by the computer.
The equipment is an essential equipment for the factory production of edible mushrooms, the domestic equipment technology has matured, the product automation, intelligence, standardization degree is high, is expected to enter the agricultural machinery subsidy directory.
Edible mushroom dryer. Edible mushrooms are divided into two types: fresh food and dry food. In recent years, the development of food, nutrition and health care products with mushrooms, ganoderma lucidum, porcini mushrooms, black fungus and other fungi as raw materials has been increasing, and the demand for edible mushroom drying equipment has been increasing accordingly.
At present, there are various drying equipment on the market, including coal, electricity, firewood and other heating methods. Grain dryer has become a large industry of agricultural machinery, with annual sales of nearly 20 billion yuan, but the current competition is very fierce, and now many dryer companies have begun to transfer to fruit and vegetable drying, Chinese herbal medicine drying, and flower drying. It is expected that with the entry of edible mushroom equipment into the national agricultural machinery purchase subsidy directory, many dryer enterprises will also enter the field of edible mushroom drying.
The above several kinds of equipment for factory production, either labor volume, labor intensity, or high technical content, or the key to ensure product quality, in accordance with the national agricultural machinery purchase subsidy policy in the concept of prioritizing the key production links, these equipment is expected to be supported by national and local subsidy policies.
Author: Liu Qi