Vocational training on “Mushroom Cultivation” concludes at KVK Ropar

District Public Relation office, Rupnagar

Vocational training on “Mushroom Cultivation” concludes at KVK Ropar

Rupnagar, 25 November: Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Ropar, under the aegis of the Directorate of Extension Education, Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), and ICAR-ATARI, Zone-1, Ludhiana, organized a five days training program on ‘Mushroom cultivation and processing’ from 21.11.2022 to 25.11.2022.

Dr. Satbir Singh, Deputy Director (Trg.) KVK, Ropar apprised that 18 farmers, farm women, and rural youth from various parts of the Ropar and nearby districts participated in this program. Dr. Satbir Singh discussed the scope of mushroom cultivation as an enterprise and encouraged successful trainees to come up as an entrepreneur in this sector. He informed me that various informative lectures and hands-on practical sessions were conducted. During this five-day program, invited talks on various subsidy and banking schemes by experts from the Department of Horticulture, Ropar, and SBI, Ropar, were also arranged for the participants.

Dr. Sanjeev Ahuja, Assistant Professor (Horticulture) and program coordinator of this training, shared that participants were provided detailed information on the production, packing, storage, and marketing of button, dhingri, and shitake mushrooms, additionally mushroom cultivation during the summer season was also covered. A series of presentations, demonstrations, and hands-on practice sessions on the preparation of compost, spawning, bagging, casing, etc., were conducted.

An invited lecture on the nutritive value of mushrooms, preparation of healthy recipes, and mushroom pickles were conducted by Dr. Princy, Assistant Professor (Home Science). An exposure visit of trainees is also planned at a nearby commercial mushroom production unit. The training concluded with the distribution of readymade mushroom bags for demonstration purposes among the trainees.