'Shroom Boom! Xinshe's Shiitake Mushrooms

If you make a trip out to the Xinshe District of Taichung City in the early fall to seek out the famed shiitake, mushroom farmers may tell you: "Now's the tail-end of mushroom picking time! You should come earlier, right after the Dragon Boat Festival when summer mushrooms are at their peak-plump, round and beautiful-but the villagers would be insanely busy and unable to show you around!"

Nevertheless, when I visit this important center of mushroom production on the verge of the off-season (Mid-Autumn Festival until December), there's still an air of excitement to be felt.

At one late-harvest mushroom farm, a small group of middle-aged and older folks are in the courtyard of their home, deftly cutting mushroom stems with scissors. If the mushrooms gathered in the morning aren't immediately sorted and heat-dried, they'll lose their freshness.

Behind the mushroom cutting yard is a series of rumbling hot air dryers; in each one, 800 kilograms of shiitake undergo 20 hours of low-temperature drying (max. 70°C). The rich aromas waft out when the oven doors are opened, and the mushrooms must be immediately packaged to seal in the fragrances and keep them dry.

At 4 p.m., the mushroom picking starts a second time. "If the mushroom caps are only halfway open in the morning, we wait until they're 70% open in the afternoon before picking them. Otherwise, they'll open too far by the next morning, and the flavor would suffer," explains mushroom farmer Wei Meiyu.

In the evening, the dormant, empty mushroom sheds suddenly light up. Tens of thousands of freshly inoculated "growing bags" from nearby manufacturers have arrived. Everybody works together storing them in neat rows. Now comes the long incubation period: the mycelia take about four months to propagate throughout the substrate. Mushroom farmers develop a love-hate relationship with these high-quality winter shiitake, because while they generate big revenues, they require meticulous care.

Xinshe has recently become a tourist destination, with pick-it-yourself tourist farms and splendid garden restaurants worth visiting. On the facing page: shiitake are low-calorie, high-protein, high-fiber foods, perfect for salads, stews or stir-frying.

According to the Agricultural Research Institute (ARI), Xinshe boasts 200 hectares of shiitake growing grounds, supplying Taiwan with 50-60% of its shiitake (dry and fresh). Xinshe concentrates its efforts on producing high-priced dried shiitake: these average NT$800-1,200 per kilogram wholesale, 10 times the price of fresh mushrooms. Indeed, shiitake bring in NT$1.85 billion annually to Xinshe, or 43% of the total agricultural output of the region, creating ample employment opportunities.

"In Xinshe, if you're willing to pick up a pair of scissors, you don't have to fear joblessness. Youngsters are also eager to take the baton and enter the mushroom business," says Chen Weijie, who heads Team 2 of the Xinshe Mushroom Production and Marketing Teams.

Mushroom growing, explains Chen, is different from traditional crops. It's an elaborate form of agriculture: it is labor intensive and highly specialized. The production chain, from top to bottom, includes the manufacture of the mushroom growing medium which is inoculated with spawn. Next, the farms do the cultivating, growth management, harvesting, cutting, sorting and drying. The used growing bags are sent to a special recycling center for composting.

Eleven years ago, Chen willingly gave up her urban workaday life to marry and move to Shuijing Village, on the periphery of Xinshe. "It was the peaceful surroundings of the mushroom farms and the cooperative village atmosphere that drew me here," she says.

Eager to help all she can, Chen rushes around coordinating production and marketing teams, one third of whose members are second-generation mushroom growers, the youngest only 23. In August, the Xinshe District Farmers' Association organized the first dried shiitake competition, whose judges included experts from the Agriculture and Food Agency, the ARI, university departments of food science and horticulture, and the Taiwan Mushroom Development Association, plus the head chef of a hotel, to grade the mushrooms' appearance, weight, plumpness, aroma, and post-soak color and texture. In the end, Chen won the championship from among 29 contestants.

Fresh shiitake mushrooms need to be sorted, graded and heat-dried immediately. The removed stems are an important ingredient for vegetarian cuisines. After 20 hours of drying, the richly fragrant mushrooms emerge from the ovens. The fruits of the season's labors are packed into this warehouse, waiting to fetch a good price from buyers.

Shiitake farming in Taiwan began in Puli in 1909. A Japanese technician at the forerunner of the ARI made improvements to the spawn-inoculation technology, and developed the bed-log cultivation method. This involves cutting a section of tree trunk about a meter long, drilling holes in it and inserting shiitake spawn. The holes are then sealed with wax, and the logs placed in a dark, cool place. After 12 months, the mycelia have grown well into the wood. After watering and agitating the log with sharp knocks, the mushrooms will grow out.

Lue Yun-sheng, assistant researcher at the Mushroom Laboratory of the ARI's Plant Pathology Division, explains why Xinshe, as well as in Puli and Yuchi in mountainous Nantou County, are the centers for shiitake production in Taiwan. Shiitake are a temperate-zone fungus that needs low temperature stimulation for the fruiting bodies (the mushrooms themselves) to grow, ideally 15-20°C, with the growing environment cool, dark and well ventilated. Thus temperate, low-elevation mountain regions of central Taiwan with daytime-nighttime temperature differences of around 10°C are the best areas for cultivation.

But how has the remote town of Xinshe managed to outshine its rivals to be the unquestioned leader in Taiwan's shiitake growing industry?

Lue elucidates: First, Xinshe beats both Puli and Yuchi in terms of climatic conditions. The northwestern part of Xinshe is located in a river valley and the southeastern part abuts the mountains, so the district receives wind from both east and west, coming from the river valley and the Taiwan Strait. In contrast, Puli is located in a basin, and Yuchi too far inland.

This is why Xinshe mushroom farmers experienced unforgettable bumper crops before global warming affected the shiitake business.

Chen remembers the pleasant summers of those years, when a good rain after the Dragon Boat Festival would guarantee a bumper harvest a week later. Working 15 hours a day and harvesting for a couple weeks at a time was the norm, and the mushrooms that they harvested were large and substantial. "Though we were insanely busy, our pockets were filling up with cash," says Chen.

Another boon was the development of the use of growing bags.

The technique of growing mushrooms in bags of growing medium was developed in Taiwan in the 1970s, and several improvements have been made since. The best method developed so far is to let piles of sawdust sit for a month, mixing in rice bran, cornmeal and soybean meal during this period, and irrigating with water so the sawdust can build up nutrients the mushrooms need for growing. Then the mixture undergoes high temperature sterilization to prevent the growth of microbes. Afterwards, it is run through a packing machine, compressing it into 25-centimeter-long logs wrapped in plastic, into which cotton plugs are inserted. They're then placed in a steamer for a second round of sterilization at high temperatures, letting them cool off naturally afterwards.

Next they're moved into an inoculation room, where spawn are introduced into the cotton, and they're good to grow. Four to five months later, when the spawn have matured and the plastic wrap removed, there will be four to six harvests, taking about a week between each fruiting and harvest, with the first mushrooms to grow boasting the best quality and quantity.

Growing-bag cultivation fully replaced bed-log cultivation over a decade ago because of its high productivity and ease of management. Now only a small number of Aboriginal villages employ bed-log cultivation, and only for tourism purposes.

Chen Tsung-ming, former director of the Taiwan Mushroom Development Association and a graduate in food science from National Chung Hsing University, recalls the shiitake boom that lasted from the mid 1970s until the early 1990s. At that time, some people even invested large sums of money in shiitake growing technology. "But in this early period, growing-bag technology wasn't mature and spawn survival rate wasn't very high, and many people failed. Those who withstood the trials were just like shiitake that had beaten the odds and taken root: they mushroomed," says Chen.

Another factor is that since Xinshe developed as a modern town more slowly than Puli, small farmers were more able to expand their growing areas, gaining the opportunity to pursue the capital-intensive heat-dried shiitake business.

Interestingly, many local entrepreneurs are teachers who had studied at National Taichung University of Education. One example is the association's current director, Zhan Xiantong, a former elementary school teacher who over a decade ago jumped on the mushroom bandwagon. His daily "curriculum" involved patrolling and doing irrigation work at the mushroom shed in which he, along with his family and friends, had invested. Had he stayed on as a teacher for another six months, he would have qualified for retirement with a higher pension; instead, he devoted himself heart and soul to the shiitake business. And now he's the big boss in the industry.

Due to different styles of cultivation management, farmers entering the shiitake business usually won't shift to planting other mushrooms; moreover, shiitake, despite their speed of growth varying with the weather, are not the toughest to grow. (Chen says, "Branched oyster mushrooms can mature in hours and need to be watched 24 hours a day, which wears people out!") On top of this, shiitake can be stored easily after heat-drying, which is an advantage that shiitake farmers have.

Xinshe has recently become a tourist destination, with pick-it-yourself tourist farms and splendid garden restaurants worth visiting. On the facing page: shiitake are low-calorie, high-protein, high-fiber foods, perfect for salads, stews or stir-frying.

But Xinshe's shiitake business has not always been smooth sailing.

Ten years ago, shiitake mushrooms from mainland China made major inroads through smuggling channels, almost completely wiping out Taiwan's shiitake industry. The Taiwan Mushroom Development Association, formed out of pressing need, fought numerous tough battles and strengthened the solidarity of the small shiitake farmers.

Chen, the soul of the association, points out that when Taiwan entered the WTO in 2002, shiitake was designated a protected agricultural product, with an annual import quota of only 220 metric tons and a ban on imports from mainland China. But soon some trading firms began gaming the system, using the name "mixed dried shiitake" to circumvent the quotas (once even importing 1,000 metric tons in a year), and some unscrupulous trading companies forged certificates of origin to transship Chinese dried shiitake to Taiwan through Japan or South Korea. This caused domestic mushroom prices to plummet.

Chen explains that the prices of mainland Chinese dried shiitake were only a third of Taiwan's, causing packaging and processing firms to scramble. However, to facilitate smuggling and reduce shipping costs, the Chinese shiitake were often compressed or shredded, and moisture content after heat-drying deviated significantly from the correct level, so they spoiled easily. "But after a second round of processing, the consumer was none the wiser," says Chen.

To cope with this problem, the association appealed to the Council of Agriculture, the Ministry of Finance and the Directorate General of Customs to amend the laws, and in 2003 the category of "mixed dried shiitake" was abolished.

Chen and his associates often went in person to hypermarkets to take random samples to see whether there were any mainland Chinese mushrooms mixed inside the packages. "Crooked packaging companies would hide mainland Chinese mushroom in the inner layers of the vacuum packaging. But there would always be a couple bags that leaked air, and a few shakes would reveal the presence of Chinese shiitake," says Chen. Once the contraband was found it would be immediately reported to the authorities.

Furthermore, the association vigorously promoted the Taiwan Shiitake authentication mark, and after years of effort this has helped sharply reduce the amount of mainland Chinese shiitake being transshipped to Taiwan through third countries, helping build Taiwan Shiitake into a high-grade name.

Xinshe has recently become a tourist destination, with pick-it-yourself tourist farms and splendid garden restaurants worth visiting. On the facing page: shiitake are low-calorie, high-protein, high-fiber foods, perfect for salads, stews or stir-frying.

As for what lies ahead....

First, spawn R&D is a matter of great urgency. Lue notes that the shiitake spawn currently used in Taiwan are "Strain 921" for fresh mushrooms and "Strain 271" for dried mushrooms, both brought in directly from Japan. But with no strain selection over the decades, the stock has weakened and yields have dropped.

Then there's climate change. In Xinshe, high temperatures from southern foehn winds have caused direct heat spoilage to spawn. On the flip side, excessive cold air currents in early 2011 caused shiitake spores in Puli, which need an air temperature of 22°C to propagate, to "freeze to death."

Compounding this, rising prices for imported sawdust and rice bran plus surging international oil prices have elevated mushroom farmers' production costs and put the squeeze on profits.

"To solve these problems, it's imperative to develop spawn strains that are more suited to Taiwan's growing conditions and can adapt to a warming environment. This a responsibility the ARI is not shirking," says Lue.

Two years ago, the ARI's Mushroom Laboratory began collecting shiitake spores from Taiwan and abroad, and crossbreeding and selection efforts commenced in 2010. This year the lab has grown several new strains, and within two years they're expected to pass field tests. The technology will be transferred to farmers at no cost. "Besides being more heat resistant, the new spawn are expected to show high yields. Ideally, each bag should produce 300 grams of mushrooms, thus effectively reducing manpower costs."

And for the sake of the environment and reducing reliance on imported sawdust, the ARI is seeking substitute materials; for instance, discarded growing bags in which king-oyster or enoki mushrooms were grown often have leftover nutrients. If the substrates in the used bags are still nutrient rich, it might be possible to make them into new growing bags that can be reused for shiitake.

The future still looks bright for Taiwan's shiitake industry!

Growing bag manufacturers each have their own nutrient formulas. The bags are required to have a spawn survival rate of 90%. They undergo an incubation period of four to five months on the farm (center), during which time white mycelia grow downward through the substrate (right).

Growing bag manufacturers each have their own nutrient formulas. The bags are required to have a spawn survival rate of 90%. They undergo an incubation period of four to five months on the farm (center), during which time white mycelia grow downward through the substrate (right).

Xinshe has recently become a tourist destination, with pick-it-yourself tourist farms and splendid garden restaurants worth visiting. On the facing page: shiitake are low-calorie, high-protein, high-fiber foods, perfect for salads, stews or stir-frying.

Growing bag manufacturers each have their own nutrient formulas. The bags are required to have a spawn survival rate of 90%. They undergo an incubation period of four to five months on the farm (center), during which time white mycelia grow downward through the substrate (right).

Fresh shiitake mushrooms need to be sorted, graded and heat-dried immediately. The removed stems are an important ingredient for vegetarian cuisines. After 20 hours of drying, the richly fragrant mushrooms emerge from the ovens. The fruits of the season's labors are packed into this warehouse, waiting to fetch a good price from buyers.

The tablelands of Xinshe, in Taichung City, blessed with clean water and a mild climate, make an ideal place for growing shiitake mushrooms. The numerous family-run mushroom farms average about one hectare per household. In the photo on the left, 23-year-old Xu Shengjie, tending to the family business, picks mushrooms with great deftness.

Xinshe has recently become a tourist destination, with pick-it-yourself tourist farms and splendid garden restaurants worth visiting. On the facing page: shiitake are low-calorie, high-protein, high-fiber foods, perfect for salads, stews or stir-frying.

Fresh shiitake mushrooms need to be sorted, graded and heat-dried immediately. The removed stems are an important ingredient for vegetarian cuisines. After 20 hours of drying, the richly fragrant mushrooms emerge from the ovens. The fruits of the season's labors are packed into this warehouse, waiting to fetch a good price from buyers.