Varsity project aims to rev up mushroom production

Revellers at the Carnivore grounds during a Blankets and Wine concert in Nairobi recently. The event’s founder has been criticised over the cost of tickets. Photo/Charles Kamau 

By Benson Amadala

In Summary

• Western Kenya’s Masinde Muliro University has fabricated such a machine and is now waiting for the Kenya Bureau of Standards approval to install it.
• Galaxy Youth Group is planning a mushroom plant. The university and the youth group are targeting investors from China to exploit the untapped potential for mushroom production as the demand — whose facts and figures are yet to be released — grows in the East Africa.

 

Mushrooms are a rare delicacy for many rural families in Western Kenya. Villagers sometimes push their luck, foraging in bushes and the forests when they cannot find the fungi in the open fields or near their homes. 

They sprout in open fields during warm and wet conditions.

However, this orientation has changed and mushroom gathering is fast growing into commercial farming.

Scholars are getting their tools ready for related projects while universities are also designing and fabricating a mushroom flour milling machine.

Western Kenya’s Masinde Muliro University has fabricated such a machine and is now waiting for the Kenya Bureau of Standards approval to install it.

A team of researchers at the university has kicked off a campaign to promote mushroom production to generate income and enhance livelihoods for rural communities.

By coming up with the machine, the university will be competing with other brands in the local market, especially imports.

Prof Asenath Sigot, the former deputy vice chancellor Academic Affairs at the institution, is spearheading the research.

She said the university has fabricated a machine for milling mushroom flour used to prepare special porridge for patients with anaemia, HIV/Aids and cancer-related conditions.

“We are waiting for certification from the Kenya Bureau of Standards before we can install the machine and start milling the flour for sale,” said Prof Sigot.

This is how far the region has moved with mushroom growing that a member of a youth group says he started from his bedroom, banking on his university training in horticulture.

Paul Kisiangani, a founder member of Galaxy Youth Group that is planning a mushroom plant, says after he stayed without a job for a long time after graduating from Egerton University, he tried his luck in mushrooms.

Mr Kisiangani, now a Master’s student at Masinde Muliro, chose his bedroom for testing the project and his wife was taken aback. Not any more.

“My wife thought I had gone crazy since she didn’t understand what I was up to,” explained Mr Kisiangani. But she became supportive after they sold the first harvest.

Mr Kisiangani borrowed Sh200,000 from a bank seven years ago to buy land for commercial mushroom farming. “We are focusing our attention on the bigger region since our surveys in Kampala indicate that what we produce is far short of demand,” said Mr Kisiangani.