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An introduction to sanitation planning for mushroom-growing environments.
Mushroom industry in the USA produces about 55 billion dollars every year. Mushroom farmers come in all shapes and sizes. There are farms that produce millions of dollars worth of mushrooms on a weekly basis. Mushroom farming is especially lucrative since spore to harvesting can only take less than a week.
However, Mushroom farming can become very hard when you don’t know how to maintain a clean environment. Especially after post-harvesting, all of the areas have to be meticulously steamed-off.
A comprehensive guide to mushroom farming can be found by following this link
We recommend that you clean all the outside of the farm house including floors, trucks, equipment using Keystone Clean-X Clout degreaser (our non-corrosive cleaner). Follow this by cleaning all the outside surface with lukewarm water.
SInce Mushroom Farming Houses are susceptible for all kinds of contamination, experts recommend steaming-off of mushroom houses once the crop is harvested. Once the last batch of mushrooms have been harvested, all of the growing rooms have to be sealed off and pasteurized with steam. This process can be even more effective when you add sanitizing agents such as Duo-Brite.
Ideally, this process needs to be repeated twice in order to effectively kill the adult flies and the larvae. By steaming-off, you will be able to kill all kinds of fungal, bacterial, and viral pathogens that might be hiding in the wooden boards.
Experts recommend steaming-off before and after the substrate removal to ensure complete sanitization of the mushroom grow room. This becomes especially important when the farm is infected with various contaminants like Trichoderma, nematodes, Mummy, LaFrance virus.
Some of the pathogens that get stuck on the wood can survive post-crop steaming and hence require another steam-ff step after the substrate removal.
Ideally, the best time to disinfect the wood by steaming-off is when it is empty and dry. Experts recommend steaming-off for a minimum of 18 hours at ~150°F (66°C) when a substrate is present and 24 hours at ~150°F (66°C) when a substrate is not present. It is okay to raise the temperature even further high but it takes about 14 hours to reach 140°F - the effective temperature to kill the pathogens.
In addition to steaming-off the grow rooms, growers we currently supply sanitizing agents to also recommend the below.
- Steam-off the houses at 150°F for 24 hours
- Cleaning the beds thoroughly and steaming them off for 24 hours at 150°F
- Soak the net in water with Duo-brite 24 hours at 150°F
- Pre-harvest and post-harvest sanitization