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 UrbanFungi
Stranger
Registered: 12/23/07
Posts: 61
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 The White Button Mushroom
#8522131 - 06/13/08 10:52 PM (3 years, 11 months ago) |
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Well, this weekend or next is the Penn State Mushroom Conference. It's the 50th Annual and I won't be making it. I went last year and I highly recommend it to anyone with the smallest hint of interest in commercial mushroom growing. At the very least you will be be able to gab mushrooms for a weekend with some of the biggest players in the american mushroom industry. You will also get the chance to shoot the shnit with many in the same boat as you - thinking about setting sail so to say.
Last year I met a couple people that are worthy of bragging, one guy grew 16000lbs of shiitake a week. That's no typo - 8 tons per week! Of course I'm giving him too much credit, but he was Head Grower at a major Pennsylvania Mushroom Cartel. The term here is used correctly, many Pennsylvania farms work cooperatively as a cartel. I also met the owner of a farm in Montana and he heard the same story I am about to tell you. This grower cooperated with a local button mushroom grower to grow oyster mushrooms in trays. They used an empty growhouse designed for buttons with retrofitted lighting. With just two flushes, he flooded the market from Denver to Seattle. He was unable to sell oysters for less than a dollar per pound.
One guy was a VP in the Amycel brand company. That's one big company. They own Spawnmate and Modern Mushrooms and Amycel. This is a true story I heard from him.
Long before my time all button mushrooms were browns. Today we call that complex old browns. Technically they were Amish browns. They had a flat brown cap. Simple. Except one thing. Growers were constantly buggered by these white mutations that always showed up. They were considered unmarketable and were trashed. Lots of money was dumped into stabilizing the already very very shallow gene pool. They wanted to get rid of the white button mutation.
One farmer made a dramatic realization that changed the industry forever. This farmer's white mutations had a dome shaped cap instead of a flat cap. Even though the mushrooms were of relatively the same size and the BE was roughly the same, the dome shaped caps were heavier and it meant the pickers were much more efficient per pound picked. Heavier mushrooms means less mushrooms per pound means more mushrooms picked per hour. Because of this massive advantage, growers all over picked up the new stabilized white button mushroom that promised lower labor costs. Now I don't know how they changed the market to demand white buttons, but they did. And over the years, this dome shaped trait was bred back into the brown button mushroom. New browns are called Portabellos or creminis and when young have a dome shaped cap that they were given from this one white button mushroom strain.
Today, almost every commercial button mushroom has this dome shaped trait bred into it. Everyone but a few Amish growers are using strains that came from that one mushroom that had a dome shaped cap. Essentially, 99.95% of all button mushroom strains; white or brown, came from that one mushroom with the dome shaped cap. This is why the industry as a whole is plagued by viruses, such as virus X.
Sorry if that was long winded and/or left out important details. I'm gettin drunk, bored, wishing that I was packing for Penn State.
So heres a big  to you, Mr. Dome Capped Shiitake Man.
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 Cryogenicz
what?
 
Registered: 07/01/04
Posts: 2,344
Loc: Oregon
Last seen: 1 day, 18 hours
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Re: The White Button Mushroom [Re: UrbanFungi]
#8522256 - 06/13/08 11:50 PM (3 years, 11 months ago) |
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Sounds cool.
-Graham
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primordius77
The BEEKEEPER
Registered: 05/30/08
Posts: 20
Loc: South Africa
Last seen: 3 days, 15 hours
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Re: The White Button Mushroom [Re: Cryogenicz]
#8522409 - 06/14/08 01:03 AM (3 years, 11 months ago) |
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Very interesting! 
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Rammstein
Shidoshi
Registered: 06/06/08
Posts: 111
Loc: Inbred Indiana , USA.
Last seen: 10 months, 27 days
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Re: The White Button Mushroom [Re: primordius77]
#8522440 - 06/14/08 01:18 AM (3 years, 11 months ago) |
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Yes, very interesting info ! Thanx for posting !
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falcon
In the green
Registered: 04/01/02
Posts: 5,149
Last seen: 1 day, 7 hours
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Re: The White Button Mushroom [Re: UrbanFungi]
#8523159 - 06/14/08 10:23 AM (3 years, 11 months ago) |
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Thanks UrbanFungi, great post!
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greysRDbest
Mushroom Dork
Registered: 07/16/06
Posts: 34,257
Loc: nunya
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Re: The White Button Mushroom [Re: UrbanFungi]
#8523540 - 06/14/08 12:24 PM (3 years, 11 months ago) |
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here is another version of the story.
this was lifted from wikipedia
regular brown (A. brunnescens) have a domed cap. Most Agaricus mushrooms dont develop a plane cap until they are mature.
Cultivation of Agaricus bisporus originated in France, when agriculturist Olivier de Serres noted that transplanting mushroom mycelium would lead to more mushrooms. Originally, cultivation was unreliable as mushroom growers would watch for good flushes of mushrooms in fields before digging up the mycelium and replanting in beds of composted manure or inoculating 'bricks' of compressed litter, loam and manure. Spawn collected this way contained pathogens and crops would be commonly infected or not grow at all.[8]
In 1893 sterilised, or pure culture, spawn was discovered and produced by the Pasteur Institute in Paris.[9] Today's commercial variety of the common mushroom was originally a light brown color. In 1926, a Pennsylvanian mushroom farmer found a clump of common mushrooms with white caps in his mushroom bed. Like white bread it was seen as a more attractive food item and was very popular.[10] As was done with the navel orange and Red Delicious apple, cultures were grown from the mutant individuals, and most of the cream-colored store mushrooms we see today are products of this chance natural mutation.
Agaricus bisporus is cultivated in at least 70 countries around the world.[2] In most supermarkets, common mushrooms are marketed as "table mushrooms" and are often packed in small quantities. Mushrooms may be sold sliced or whole.
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Bretdaniel said:
Alright, at first i thought using the reply button was stupid but now I get it, shit confused me for a second.
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