The world’s costliest edible fungi, Morchella mushroom, cultivated in the DMR, Solan in Himachal Pradesh.
The rare and the costliest Morchella mushroom has for the first time successfully been cultivated under the guidance of The Indian Council of Agriculture Research-run Directorate of Mushroom Research (DMR), Solan. This wonder-filled mushroom is commonly known as “Guchchi” in Jammu & Kashmir. It’s a Kashmiri delicacy used in Pulao.
Wildly grown and scattered sprouts in the wilderness, their growth is highly unpredictable. This uncertainty made DMR’s several attempts unsuccessful to cultivate Guchchi mushroom since its inception. Making aware of the potentials, Dr. V.P. Sharma, Director, DMR, assigned the challenge to Dr. Anil Kumar in 2019, who prepared a project assignment called “Standardization of Cultivation Technique for Morchella Mushroom”.
The fresh morel mushroom has a limited season barely a few weeks during the spring i.e. start of March till the end of the same month. Farmers collect the fungi from wild habitats in the north-western Himalayas for local as well as for export purposes to Europe and the USA. These morels are sold for prices ranging from Rs. 10,000 per kg to Rs.30, 000 per kg. The high price range owes to the difficulties in its collection and artificial cultivation of Guchchi will yield great profits.
Dr. Anil Kumar informed, “Five species were selected for the experiment and after much deliberation, the substrate preparation technique was standardized for its cultivation. Under continuous rigorous in vitro trials on the induction of fruit bodies in Guchchi, three small ascomata of 0.5 to 1 cm were obtained. In the first seasonal cultivation trial started in October 2019, conidial stage and a mature ascomata of 13 cm length was recorded under greenhouse conditions on April 13, 2020”.
“I was treading in the positive direction and with continuous efforts, I again succeeded and induced 12 ascomata in the second research trial under greenhouse conditions on February 23”, he said.
Keeping a positive hope, as the experiment is still in progress, Dr. Anil is hopeful that fruit bodies of Guchchi would keep on sprouting on his experimental site till April 2021.
“This is for the first time that the ICAR-DMR, Solan, has succeeded in producing fruit bodies of Guchchi mushrooms. As a result, India has entered the list of select countries such as the USA, China, France, etc. that have successfully attempted to cultivate Gucchi mushroom under artificial conditions,” said Dr. V.P. Sharma, Director, DMR.
“There is a need to improvise our technology before it is transferred to farmers, hopefully in the next two to three years. This will revolutionize the Indian mushroom industry and help in the economic uplift of farmers,” added Sharma.
Guchchi mushroom has properties to be light of guts and is valued for the treatment of arthritis, anaemia, tumour.