Gro pro: How India is making room for new kinds of shrooms
ByChristalle Fernandes
Oct 11, 2024 03:59 PM IST
India grows a staggering variety of mushrooms. Yet, we can’t move past the button variety. See how some growers are putting the fun in fungi
Why aren’t we eating more mushrooms? We already know they taste good – we’ve devoured porcini puffs, gucchi biryani, enoki bibimbap and quattro-fungi pizza at trendy restaurants. We know they’re nutritious too – all fibre, no fat, packed with Vitamin D. They’re easy to grow – they spring from sawdust, dead logs, straw, coffee grounds, even cardboard sheets. They’re sustainable – they require less water, energy, and land than vegetable crops. They’re literally a precious asset – earlier this year, researchers at Goa University published research on how they synthesised gold nanoparticles from roen olmi, a wild, local mushroom variety.