Capacity Building Programme on Mushroom Farming for the farm women under Farmer FIRST Programme
A capacity buildingprogramme on “Mushroom cultivation- a profitable enterprise and source of additional income for the farm women” was conducted under Farmers FIRST Programme of NRRI, Cuttack in the cluster consisting of four villages, Satyabhamapur, Biswanathpur, Laxminarayanpur and Ganeswarpur on 21.11.2017.
At the outset Dr. Lipi Das, Principal Investigator of this Project deliberated on the formation of Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs). She also gave a lime light on the importance of cultivation of mushroom, its medicinal and dietary values, to go for its commercial cultivation and marketing through the Self Helf Groups (SHGs). Dr. S. Lenka, Co-PI of this Project gave detail deliberation about mushroom cultivation to the adopted farm women. Practical, interactive demonstration on paddy straw (Volvariella spp) and oyster/mushroom (Pleurotus spp) cultivation was done with the active involvement of the participating farm women.
At last, all the participating farm women were provided with mushroom spawn bottles (both paddy straw and oyster), polythenes, wheat and Bengal gram.
From this skill orientd training programme, it is expected that majority of the farm women will come forward to practise the mushroom cultivation , providing the nourishment to their family members and also generating additional income to enrich themselves particularly, cultivating through SHGs.