Farmer Urges Investment In Pharmaceutical Mushroom

A mushroom farmer, Chief Moore Chinda, has urged the Federal Government to invest in pharmaceutical mushroom, known as “ganoderma,” used in producing drugs for HIV/AIDS patients.

Managing Director, Dilomat Farms Limited, Chinda made the call in an interview with newsmen in Port Harcourt.

He said that the medicinal qualities of the ganoderma mushroom were high, noting that the mushroom was already being used in Sweden to manufacture drugs for people living with HIV/AIDS.

The farmer also said that research was ongoing in Swaziland on the use of ganoderma mushroom to treat HIV/AIDS patients which, he said, was yielding encouraging results.

Chinda said that although he majored in mushroom farming, he could not go into the cultivation of ganoderma mushroom due to its huge fund requirement.

He said that the process included using waste materials such as sawdust, cotton waste, groundnut-shells and rice bran to produce the spawn (seedlings).

He said that production and preservation were the most important aspects of mushroom farming, which was overwhelming to his farm.

He urged governments at all levels to invest in such farming since it is a huge foreign exchange earner.

The farmer said that the government could easily meet up with the processes involved in the production, adding that mushrooms had many uses, including being produced as milk, drinks and beverages.

Chinda noted that many Nigerians were unaware of the nutritional and health importance of mushrooms consumption.

According to him, it is used in the treatment and prevention of various kinds of diseases.

He observed that Nigerians lived in “great wealth” on account of unutilised abundant waste products that could have been turned into wealth.

Chinda listed such waste to include rice bran, wheat bran, sugarcane bagasse, water hyacinth, palm bunch wastes, plantain and banana leaves, groundnut shield, cotton wastes and sawdust.

The farmer said that the unutilised waste materials constituted environmental hazard to communities and called on the government to transform the wastes into wealth.