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Magic Health Benefits of Mushrooms

 Mother Nature has presented man with attractive variety of mushrooms to be used as food as well as medicine. They were highly appreciated in the history and culture of ancient people in various civilizations. Mushrooms being low in calories, fat content with no cholesterol and being rich in various minerals are the ideal choice of food for health conscious people. These days researches are looking up to mushroom in search of novel drugs to cure diabetes, heart ailments and even cancer of various types.


About Mushroom

Mushrooms are macroscopic fruiting bodies produced by microscopic fungi of certain fungal groups. They are often classified as a vegetable or herb. There are more than 14,000 types of mushrooms of which only about 3,000 are edible, more than 700 have known medicinal properties. There are many species of mushrooms which are poisonous. The world over, only about 20 mushrooms is commercially cultivated. For rest of the mushrooms, either appropriate technologies for cultivation have not been developed yet or they have not been tried to cultivate

Mushroom Farming and Indian Scenario

The mushroom farming for food is thought to have begun as early as 600 A.D. in China. In Europe it appears to have begun first in France in the 1650s. From there it spread to other European countries and probably entered the United States from England by the 1870s.

Mushrooms are cultivated in at least 60 countries with China, the United States, Netherlands, France and Poland being the top producers. Though the conditions for mushroom cultivation between India and China were similar, China topped in mushroom production, while India did not even find a place among the 100 mushroom producing countries in the world. The Indian production scenario was negligible at 50,000 tonnes per annum as against the world’s production of 55 lakh tonnes.




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