This year the annual ‘Australian Mushroom Growers Association Conference’ was held from 29th September to the 2nd of October. Venue was the Twin Water Resort in the so-called SunshineState of Australia; Queensland. The event was well organised and successful.

Visitors from all the Australian states, New Zealand, Tasmania, the United States, Korea, the Netherlands, Eire, the UK and even a representative from India travelled to this family resort on the ‘sunshine coast’, about 100 kilometres to the north of Brisbane.

As the equivalent season in Australia is spring, and schools were enjoying half-term break, it was the perfect location to attend a conference with the entire family. Something many delegates did, creating a particularly relaxing and enjoyable ambience at the event.

This year the conference was excellently supported by a large number of sponsorships from companies supplying to the mushroom industry - both national and international (BVB Euroveen, TM Marketing PTY, Sylvan, Lemdell Pty Ltd, JF Mckenna, Champfood, VISY Board, Tunneltech and others).

Promotion and selfmanagement

After the conference was opened by the chairman of the AMGA, Douglas Schirripa, various lectures followed on subjects such as ‘Horticulture Australia’, ‘R&D Summary’, ‘Strategic Review’, ‘The Mushroom Monitor-Consumer Market Research’ and ’Mushrooms & Cancer Research’.

A range of topics designed to raise awareness among growers and encourage them to create funds to be used to investigate channels that can contribute to higher mushroom consumption.

The extent of consumer-targeted advertising of fresh mushrooms in Australia is sizeable - varying from promotional campaigns at major national festivals to billboard slogans at local sports clubs such as ‘No meal without mushrooms’, ‘Make the meal with mushrooms’ or ‘Mushrooms the tastemaker’. They prefer general slogans instead of the brand names of growers or traders. The success of this approach is demonstrated by the fact that annual consumption per head in Australia has risen above the 3 kilogram level.

An entire afternoon was devoted to the theme ‘Managing Yourself’, an exceptionally well-attended session, with the audience numbering many partners and family of growers. The issues addressed covered balancing the demands of home and work, recognising the symptoms of bad management, understanding various communication systems and constructive anger control management by employer and employees. A highly educational afternoon with many recognisable situations.

Quality improvement

The third day of the conference was again opened by the chairman, and devoted to improving quality. The theme was ‘Why is quality so important’.

A contribution from Mrs Marion Lawson, speaking on behalf of spawn producers Sylvan Australia, made it clear how crucial the spawn and variety choice contribute to improving quality and quantity.                                        

The invited keynote speaker this year was advisor Ray Samp, from Texas, USA. Samp gave a fascinating lecture about manipulating pinheading in order to optimally utilize the energy in the compost. The audience attentively listened to his explanation of aspects such as spread, growing room conditions, blow down and choosing the right picking moment.

Casing soil and quality improvement were the final items that afternoon. Casing soil suppliers and researchers were closely involved in the programme. They each discussed a subject of their own choice and indicated which actions they thought would improve quality.

First on the rostrum was Eric Vernooij of

Ian Maclay of Harte Peat spoke on the influence of the micro/macro climate in the casing soil surface, followed by Martyn Dewhurst of Tunnel Tech, who talked about how wrongly estimating the properties of casing soil often equals the failure of growers to exploit its potential to the full. Alan Clift, of Mushroom IPDM spoke about formalin use in casing soil and Lam Janssen, Topterra, closed by sharing his company's experiences with increasing the EC in casing soil, resulting in an increase in the dry matter percentage.

MistyValley

Traditionally, Saturday was reserved for a farm walk, this time to the ‘MistyValley’ facility close to Brisbane. Growers Gerard and Nikki Rutten, descendents of Dutch immigrants, run a relatively small farm with a weekly production of around 3000 kilos.

They grow in bags, delivered incubated by a local compost supplier. The work is fairly labour intensive, as filling and emptying the bags is still done by hand. The mushrooms are nearly all marketed locally and reach reasonable to good average prices. There are another twenty or so similar family-run operations in the same area.

An interesting excursion that continued in ‘Aussie World’, a family theme park, where the farm walk concluded with a selection of tasty mushroom based snacks and drinks.

The AMGA conference 2004 was traditionally closed with a gala dinner, with top entertainment and last but not least an auction of donated items presided over by Chairman Schirripa, which raised 5,500 Australian Dollars for charity.

In summary, an informative conference with various subjects packaged in an attractive and relaxing programme. We look forward to Tasmania in 2005!

in the Netherlands. His subject addressed maintaining and managing a good contact layer between compost and casing soil, essential for growing quantity with the required quality.