Perception of farmers and stakeholders toward mushroom production in Andaman Islands

Introduction

Andaman and Nicobar group of Islands is distantly situated in Bay of Bengal from the mainland India, between 6-14 0 N latitude and 92-94 0 E longitude and constitutes 572 nos. of islands. Out of 572 islands, 30 islands are only human inhabited and agricultural activities are being undertaken. The annual rainfall varies from 2900 to 3100 mm with mean maximum and minimum temperature of 32 °C and 22 °C, respectively. The relative humidity varies from 68 to 86%. Island climatic condition is quite congenial for growing mushroom. The ample availability of paddy straw in the islands favoured by very low cattle population which could efficiently utilized for mushroom cultivation. The other agro-wastes like banana leaves, areca nuts sheath, saw dust etc. can also be used as substrates along with paddy straw. Mushroom cultivation has tremendous potential for recycling of agrowaste, forest waste into highly nutritious food and become future agricultural revolution after the Green Revolution. Mushrooms are good source of proteins (Assemie and Abaya, 2022) [4] , vitamins, minerals (Kochan et al., 2019) [12] , polyphenol (Thakur and Singh, 2025) [19] , polysaccharides (Yin et al., 2021) [22] and fatty acids (Sande et al., 2019) [14] . Mushroom become valuable dietary supplements as it contains lysine, threonine, tryptophan, methionine and cystine as essential amino acids (Thakur, 2020; Ayimbila and Keawsompong, 2023) [20,6] . Islands have very limited agricultural land which offer mushroom production as food and nutritional security (Pandey et al., 2018, Adedokun and George-David, 2016) [13,1] . The prevailing climatic condition of Island supports the cultivation of three mushroom species viz., Pleurotus (Oyster mushroom), Volveriella (paddy straw mushroom) and Calocybe (milky mushroom). Among them, Oyster mushroom can cultivate through the years as a seasonal cultivation without environmental interference. Its cultivation technology is ecofriendly, less expensive and provides nutritional and livelihood security along with income generations and cottage industries purpose. It is one of the best agro-technology for better remuneration and empowerment of farm women and rural youths. For spending each 50-60 rupees, the farmer could earn 250-300 rupees with existing facility in addition to nutritional and health benefit for the family members.

Oyster mushroom cultivation is relatively simple and easy to follow by all kinds of growers. Education awareness on growing and/or consuming of mushroom support sustainable food system by impacting the economic, environmental, and socio-cultural dimension of sustainability of the Islands. Andaman and Nicobar Islands is a famous tourist destination and there is increasing demand of mushroom in hotels by tourists. So mushroom cultivation will enhance the economy by creating employment opportunities among the farming communities. The present study was undertaken with the specific objective to assess the perception of farmers and other stockholder in mushroom production in Andaman Islands.

Materials and Methods

Farmers' interest assessment study was undertaken to know the view of farming community on mushroom cultivation. During the study training cum awareness programmes for practicing farmers, farm women, rural youths, extension functionaries, house wives and college students were conducted in twenty-two villages of South Andaman district. A structured questionnaire containing questions on mushroom cultivation and their opportunity framed to elicit information from farmers and other stakeholders. Information from a total of 550 participants in various groups from twenty-two villages was collected. The view towards mushroom cultivation of each participant was determined using a perception rating scale for the five main types (A, B, C, D, E) and seven sub-types of reactions. The details of categories and their score card was given in Table . No1. The perception index (PI) was then calculated for each fungal species using the following formula:

Where n = frequency of each type or sub type of perception. On the basis of the Perception index (PI) values, various villages were categorized into four groups: I-Very active (PI >20), II-active (PI 16-20), III-moderately active (PI 11-15) and IV weakly active (PI ˂10) the details are presented in Table 3. The farmers belonging to very active group were enthusiastically adopted mushroom cultivation as new enterprise for employment generation during short periods of time while the majority of farming communities and other stakeholders showed partial interest in mushroom cultivation (D type group interaction). The percent frequency interaction between the villages and their farming community and other stockholders are shown in Table 4. The maximum frequency of 80.31 percent was recorded in positive perception where the group member shown reliance on mushroom cultivation followed by 11.36 percent negative perception in which either the community member was fearing about mushroom or not interested in mushroom cultivation. Among the whole interaction 34.09 percent community members were shown keen interest to know about the mushroom and 19.70 percent partially interested and 8.32 percent confidently inclined towards mushroom cultivation. The patterns of percent interaction category of diverse farming community over various type of interaction were presented in Table 5. The interaction category is very much variable. The partial/absolutely interest in mushroom cultivation was most common (81.82%) in categories of House wives followed by Farm women (63.64.0%) and Practicing Farmers (40.09%). Very confident in mushroom cultivation was observed in categories of farm women (31.82%) followed by rural youth (9.09%) and house wives (4.54%). Among the entire participating groups practicing farmers showed (45.45%) negative interaction which exhibits fear about mushroom toxicity and no interest in mushroom. During the study, it was found out that the natures of perception are dependent on type of farming community and their existing facility. Farm women and house wives have strong affinity towards mushroom cultivation.

Results

A

Discussion

In our present work, perception of various farming group toward oyster mushroom cultivation have been investigated to assess the feasibility of mushroom cultivation in Andaman and Nicobar Islands as livelihood option. To our knowledge no investigation has been performed for comparing perception of farming communities toward mushroom cultivation in Andaman Islands. However, Kaur, (2016) [11] study the impact of training course on knowledge gain of mushroom trainees. Sunita and Sikha, (2015) [18] reported the positive attitude of women farming communities on oyster mushroom cultivation adoption. Mushroom enterprises become important source of employment and income to reduce poverty, especially in rural area (Zhang et al., 2014) [23] . Alfred and Arifalo, (2012) [2] concluded that mushroom farming is of high commercial value to people and is a source of nutrients for people. Jonnatul et al., (2019) [10] reported that mushroom farming does not only help in producing empowerment but also help to alleviate the poverty status of the rural farmers. Ashiegbu et al., (2022) [3] stated that mushroom production is really economically profitable. Sharma et al., (2016) [16] stated that mushroom production as a matter of fact, can help provide employment opportunities for the unemployed, help families live above poverty line and such practice (growing of mushrooms) can as well help to improve the socio-economic characteristics of poor farmers. Ferdousi et al., (2019) [8] described mushroom as an arable cash crop that is high in value, grown by both smallholders and largescale farmers across the country, eco-friendly and whose profit level cannot be over emphasised but that it is labour intensive. Thakur, (2021) [21] supported that mushroom cultivation offers business opportunity and can be game changer for rural economic growth. Avanish and Noel, (2023) [5] recommended that constraints in mushroom cultivation should be checked to increase the production through skilled training and awareness programme. Shah, (2021) [15] concluded that many young mushroom entrepreneurs to develop the relevant marketing strategy by understanding the consumer perception regarding mushroom consumption in their regular diet. It was observed that income and education level shows a positive correlation with mushroom consumption, which means as the income and education level of a person increases, the mushroom consumption will also increase (Shirur et al., 2014) [17] .

Conclusion

Andaman and Nicobar Islands is a famous international tourist destination and it hosts more than four lakhs tourists annually. The climatic condition of these islands is quite congenial for round year mushroom cultivation which creates new entrepreneurship and big economic gain for farm women, rural youth and practicing farmers. The complete aim of major determining factor affecting farmers' perception about oyster mushroom cultivation from various farming communities provide pen picture strategies for future needs, assistance and way to proceed further for popularization of mushroom cultivation in Andaman and Nicobar Islands. This study also provides futuristic way for livelihood option for islanders. During the training cum awareness programmes majority of the participants had shown keen interest towards mushroom cultivation. Farm women and house wife were ready to take mushroom cultivation as livelihood option which improves their economic and social status in their family and village. Mushroom cultivation is a new venture in these islands, hence motivation of farming communities, practical training, on farm methods demonstration, awareness about nutritional and medicinal properties and market linkage will be required for mushroom revolution in Andaman Islands.

Disclaimer (Artificial Intelligence)

Authors (s) hereby declare that NO generative AI technologies such as Large Language Models (ChatGPT, COPILOT, etc.) and text-to-image generators have been used during writing or editing of this manuscript.

Acknowledgement

AcknowledgementsThe authors gratefully acknowledge the support and facilities provided by Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Port Blair. We also extended our sincere thanks to all faculty members for their valuable guidance, encouragement and assistance throughout this study.

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