http://www.erepo.iihr.ernet.in/handle/123456789/53 Wed, 15 May 2013 15:15:57 GMT 2013-05-15T15:15:57Z http://www.erepo.iihr.ernet.in/handle/123456789/147 Title: Indian machinery for mushroom cultivation Authors: G, Senthil Kumaran; Meera, Pandey; R P, Tiwari Abstract: The Indian mushroom industry has come a long way since 1950 when the first experiments were conducted on this novel protein source. The diverse agro climate, colossal amount of agricultural wastes, cheap labour and availability of suitable strains and cultivation technology have contributed to the growth and diversification of this industry. Today the Indian mushroom industry comprises of temperate species like button mushroom, sub tropical species like oyster and shiitake mushrooms and tropical species like paddy straw, milky and Reishi mushrooms. The present production of the country has touched 1,00,000 tons. However the production levels in India have not kept pace with the rising domestic and global market due to varied reasons. The two most important aspects which have hindered the growth of the Indian mushroom industry have been the non availability of quality, high yielding, disease free spawn and the inability of the Indian farmers to scale up their production without compromising on quality and being competitive. It is not economical for the small growers to import the mushroom machinery to cope up the production demand. More over, the Indian mushroom industry is highly dependent on human labour. This not only has an adverse effect on quality and production but also creates unreliable market thereby decreasing consumption levels. Having understood these problems, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research undertook the first step towards development of indigenous machinery for the mechanization of the Indian mushroom industry. Keeping in view the global competition and the rising unemployment at home, machinery were designed so that bulk quality production could be increased by enhancing labour efficiency and decreasing labour drudgery. A series of spawn production machinery like grain cleaner, grain boiler, boiled grain and chalk powder mixer, grain filler and spawn inoculator have been developed and integrated in the spawn production system of mushroom lab at IIHR, Bangalore, India. The cultivation machinery namely paddy straw and spawning machine, paddy straw sterilizer cum moisture remover and casing machine have also been developed for the Indian mushroom growers whose production capacity is above 75 kg per day. These machinery would decrease the contamination, cost of production and increase the production per unit time. The machinery designed are affordable, economical, simple machinery which can be used by any mushroom growers in the developing countries. This would boost mushroom production by helping the growers to set up small and medium scale farms in the rural areas. The following paper discusses the design and functioning of the indigenously designed and fabricated mushroom spawn production and cultivation machinery in India. Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT http://www.erepo.iihr.ernet.in/handle/123456789/147 2009-01-01T00:00:00Z http://www.erepo.iihr.ernet.in/handle/123456789/146 Title: Development of a hand operated Pomegranate aril remover Authors: G, Senthil Kumaran Abstract: The arils of the pomegranate fruit are consumed as such and used in other food items as fresh ingredient to increase the taste of the food. The juice is also extracted from the arils. This nutritious fruit is cut into two halves and the arils are removed usually by bare hands. This is a cumbersome and time consuming process. A hand operated pomegranate aril remover has been designed and developed to easily remove arils in lesser time in a hygienic way in comparison to manual operation. The machine has a semi circular solid hitting head operated in reciprocate motion by a hand operated lever arm. It also has a perforated fruit holding platform and an aril collecting chute below the platform which are fixed to a main frame with a strong and stable base. All the parts touching the fruit and arils are made of food grade stainless steel 304 and other parts are made up of mild steel. The pomegranate fruit is cut in to two halves and one half is kept upside down on the fruit holding platform so as the fruit skin is faced towards the hitting head. The handle is operated and the hitting head is moved in reciprocate motion to hit the fruit. With in two or three hitting , the arils are removed from the fruit and a collected in container through the chute. The capacity of the machine is 60 kg per hour in comparison to 18-20 kg per hour in manual operation. The efficiency of the machine is estimated about 96 % and costing about Rs.1000 (US$ 22). Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT http://www.erepo.iihr.ernet.in/handle/123456789/146 2009-01-01T00:00:00Z http://www.erepo.iihr.ernet.in/handle/123456789/145 Title: System Management for Enhancing Production of Mushroom Spawn Authors: G, Senthil Kumaran; Meera, Pandey Abstract: The term mushroom spawn has been defined as the vegetative mycelium from a selected mushroom grown on a convenient medium. The spawn comprises mycelium of the mushroom and a supporting medium, which provides nutrition to the fungus during the growth. In other words spawn could be regarded as analogous to the seeds of the higher plants. Tissue culture is the foundation of today’s mushroom spawn industry due to easy handling. Most spawn is made with mycelium from a stored tissue culture. Preparing spawn is highly technical task that is not practical for most mushroom growers to perform; therefore, specialized companies that supply growers with pure culture spawn mostly produce it. However, in some cases, it may be necessary for the growers to produce their own spawn. In such cases, access to cultures (cultivars) with proven productivity is a key component of a successful enterprise. The modern spawn production involves four essential steps. Step 1. Generation of the pure, disease free, high yielding culture of mycelium isolated from tissue of the mushroom of interest. Step 2. Growth and maintenance of the mycelium in enriched agar. The pure cultures are maintained under aseptic conditions in tubes or Petri dishes, in solid medium. Step 3. Preparation of the inoculum in grains (Mother spawn). The pure mycelium is put in contact with cereal grains, appropriately prepared, in order to colonize the grains while developing the vegetative phase. Step 4. Mass multiplication of the spawn on grain or other related substrate for the production of cultivation spawn. The industrial spawn production system involves the integrated management of purity of the fungus, its environment of growth and its efficient and economical mass multiplication. a. Biological system : • Production of pure culture : Pure, disease free,high yielding culture • Maintenance of the culture : conservation of the pure culture • Validation of the culture : For commercial agronomic traits b. Production system : Manual / mechanized mass production of spawn Which comprises of the following subsystems • Infrastructure : Buildings and equipments /machinery • Energy : Optimal utilization of energy • Water utilization : Optimal utilization of water • Personnel management : Optimal utilization of labour The biological system is managed by generating pure cultures of mushroom either by spore culture / tissue culture. These are generated and maintained by a technically qualified person under aseptic environment for years together. Once a mushroom is taken into culture, whether from spores or tissue, the resultant strain can be preserved for decades under normal refrigeration, perhaps centuries under liquid nitrogen Maintenance of pure mycelial cultures is a necessity for ultimate spawn preparation and spawn production. Once a culture is obtained, it is advisable to take note of the appearance of the mycelium, to observe the normal growth patterns of the specific lines. These observations are important so that one will be aware of even the subtlest change that may lead to deleterious effects. A desirable mycelial culture is one that is pure, free of contaminants, of sectoring and of other abnormalities. There is no in-vitro test to determine a stock culture's validity. A series of cropping trials must be conducted on the mycelial stock culture to determine a culture line's value. Mushroom yield, size, color, cap shape and any other desired quality or growth factors are selected and then compared for each culture line. The production system needs a well designed layout for spawn production laboratory with proper construction. It should provide controlled environment to avoid contamination during the operation. It is so designed to be user and machinery friendly. The raw material storage, cleaning, boiling, sterilization and inoculation are to be done in separate rooms in a well planned manner. The specialized equipments like autoclave, incubator and laminar flow are to be installed with required working space. The IIHR spawn production machinery namely grain cleaner, grain boiler, boiled grain cum chalk powder mixer, bag filler and inoculation machine would also enhance the production capacity with in the limited available time. Spawn production is a highly energy consuming system. It should be managed with the alternative energy systems like solar energy, agricultural waste fuel etc to cut down the electrical energy consumption to make it more environmental friendly. The high water requirement is to be managed by recycling used water through proper micro filters, rain water harvesting and selecting the equipment that requires less water for operation. The efficiency of the persons involved can be improved by adopting mechanization. This would not only ensures the safety of the labours but also reduce the health hazard due to chemical handling. The different unit operations of spawn production should be distributed in such a way that it utilizes less man power in less time. Since mushroom cultivation is fast emerging as an alternative horticultural crop, the demand for the quality spawn would increase accordingly. A well planned, executed and managed spawn production system would be a highly profitable business venture for many of the entrepreneurs in India as in the case of abroad to meet the increasing demand. The availability of the pure, disease free, high yielding spawn would help many mushroom growers to enhance their production thereby the overall mushroom production would increase in our country. The higher production will also need legislation in terms of quality spawn certification and certification for good spawn production practices which is not yet practiced in India. Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://www.erepo.iihr.ernet.in/handle/123456789/145 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z http://www.erepo.iihr.ernet.in/handle/123456789/142 Title: Advances in Mechanization for Nursery Industry in Hoticulture Crops Authors: S C, Mandhar Abstract: About 500 nurseries have come up around Bangalore and Kolar for vegetable crops. These nurseries raise the seedlings in portrays under shade net house. Each vegetable nursery is producing about 30,000 to 3,00,000 seedlings per day. These nurseries have become popular due to high price of seed Rs.10 to 60 thousand per kg and lower germination 60 to 90% . The farmers are purchasing healthy seedlings at Rs.0.25 to 2.00 per seedling for hybrid and F1 varieties of various crops. The seedlings are raised in portrays (98 cell) and 3 to 4 laborers are required to manually fill, dibble and seed/sow about 300 protrays in a day. Nurseries for ornamental plants exist in all the major cities and nurseries for fruit crops are available in all the fruit growing belts. The ornamental plants are generally raised in pots and fruit nursery plants/ grafts are raised in polythene bags. The machinery for media sieving, mixing, portray filling, dibbling and seeding for vegetable nurseries have been developed. The media siever sieves 1 tonne/hr of the sand, vermicompost and farmyard manure. It is operated with 1 hp electric motor and can be operated manually also. The media mixer has a capacity of 0.5 tonne/hr and is operated by 2 hp electric motor. The various constituents of media e.g. sand, FYM and vermicompost etc. can be mixed in required ratio. The dibble board dibbles 100 portrays per hour and rotary dibbler 300 portrays /hr.The vacuum seeder sows 200 portrays/hr and is operated by 1 hp vacuum pump or compressor. The automatic media mixer, portray filler, dibbler, seeder with watering attachment sows about 400 protrays/hr and needs 4 electric motors of 1.5 hp and a vacuum pump or compressor of 1 hp. The trolleys for seeded trays and seedling portrays has also been developed. The seedling depopper has a capacity of 50 protrays per hour. The rain protection structures for nursery beds has also been developed. The bag filler for fruit and ornamental nurseries has been developed and has a capacity of 700 bags per hour. The commercially available pouch form and fill machine can be modified and used to make the plastic bags and filling these with media. Upto 1000 bags can be filled in one hour. The size of the bag/pouch can be varied. The bags/ pouches are made from continuous LDPE film. The media sand, vermicompost, FYM can be sterilized using a baby boiler. The pot fillers, transplanter for transplanting the seedlings to bigger pots and automatic grafting machine for ornamental and fruit crop nurseries are yet to be developed. The portray destacker and washers also need development Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://www.erepo.iihr.ernet.in/handle/123456789/142 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z