By Renee Wood
A Healesville based mushroom grower has made history becoming the first producer to grow ‘morel’ mushrooms commercially in the southern hemisphere.
Morels are an exclusive and sought-after mushroom generally only found when foraging in the wild however, Gramco Fungi has cracked the code to growing them in Australia.
Gramco Fungi has been working with a consultant from China who’s assisted the business in cultivating the variety.
Gramco Fungi owner Wes Arnott won’t be giving the secret away but said it’s taken them two years to get to this stage of a successful crop.
“The market for morel mushrooms is $1 to $2 billion a year and 95 per cent of it and more than that would be wild harvest,” Mr Arnott said.
“Even the colder climate ones in China and France and America are going to produce at a different time to ours, so they produce when the prices are low – we produce when the price is higher.”
Mr Arnott is looking to perfect the growing conditions and look to try indoor morel production like the many other varieties they currently grow indoors.
While the demand is hot for the variety, Mr Arnott intends to sell the technology to other growers once it’s fully established to bring a new industry to the country.
“We couldn’t produce enough on this farm, so what we intend to do is to proof of concept and then sell the technology to other people who want to grow. Okay, and show them how to do it. So there we go. develop an export market. So it’s sort of like it’s potentially a new industry for Australia.”
The variety is highly valued with local wholesale pricing around $80 a kilo, while retail reaches up to $150/kg.
“We know we can sell them in Canada, America, Europe all over, because it’s one of the world’s favourite mushrooms.”
Mr Arnott has been in the wholesale mushroom business since 1994 and has a long history working in the horticultural industry.
He believes Australia’s interest in mushrooms is truly starting to grow with many known for medicinal values, antioxidants and great for organs.
“Japanese and Chinese medicine – there is hundreds of thousands of articles about medicinal mushrooms…
“The medicinal properties of mushrooms are now being investigated by a lot of Western companies and science and they’re just amazing – all the different medicinal properties in what a mushroom does.”
Gramco Fungi sells other varieties such as lions mane and oysters – local residents may be familiar with the stalls at the Healesville Organic Markets at Coronation Park.
They are now selling direct to customers from the farm from Wednesday to Fridays 9am-3pm.
