Don’t miss Peter Whyte’s mouthwatering mushroom portfolio.

However the precious fungi grown here do not suffer the vagaries of the weather as did the first serious attempts at commercial cultivation undertaken in New South Wales during the 1930s.

No straw-covered, raised open-field beds here, but a multi-million dollar climate-controlled growing facility and laboratory.

Its realisation took a decade. Back in the late 1980s, restaurateur Michael Brown was aghast to realise that exotic dried imported mushrooms were fetching $100 a kilo and that Australia lacked the technology to grow them.

His entrepreneurial interest was aroused and, with an earlier-acquired agricultural science degree in hand, he took part in a Tasmanian Enterprise Workshop program.

From this program, Huon Valley Mushrooms emerged and the first harvest of white mushrooms, Agaricus bisporus, was in 1991. The company’s early focus was on white mushrooms and other fast-fruiting varieties with high market demand, like the Swiss Brown or Tasmanian honey brown, the brown Agaricus, and the Oyster mushroom, Pleurotus ostreatus.

The cash flow generated underpinned R&D funding into the more lucrative and temperamental exotics.

These cluster-growing fan-shaped mushrooms are available in an amazing range of colours and boast a wonderful silky mouthfeel.

The brown and white Agaricus shared equal billing with consumers until a mutant white strain took centre stage in the 1920s and the brown variety temporarily fell from grace. However, with a more robust flavour than its white-capped cousin, reminiscent of the paddock-plucked mushrooms of my youth, the brown Agaricus is once again much sought after, as the one tonne a week produced by Huon Valley Mushrooms testifies.

Pleurotus ostreatus, the oyster mushroom, was another early specialty. These cluster-growing fan-shaped mushrooms are available in an amazing range of colours and boast a wonderful silky mouthfeel.

The real challenge began when HVM embarked on intensive research into the commercial production of shiitake, also known as Japanese tree or forest mushroom. While HVM found that the fungi being produced to that had been somewhat nonchalant as to their growing medium, the shiitake were not.

Some 2000 years ago, long before mushrooms were cultivated in Europe, the Japanese were harvesting these large fleshy brown parasol-shaped caps from water-softened dead oak wood. As this particular variety of wood was unavailable in Australia, HVM needed to find an alternative wood or to develop an artificial ‘log’.

The production of shiitake is very much a hands-on affair.

It took three years of persistence before a eucalypt sawdust log proved itself to be both inexpensive and readily available and with similar yields to the first trialled but disproportionately expensive myrtle, the closest local variety to the Japanese hardwood.

In 1999 the company received Commonwealth Government research and development loan assistance to commercialise its artificial log production system for shiitake production. HVM now produces 600-800kg of shiitake a week with potential to increase this fivefold.

Research into other edible mushroom species continues … ¶

Mushroom Magic portfolio by Peter Whyte.