Getting the best from your cookout
As mushroom crops mature, pest and pathogen levels increase so that by the end of the crop, the pathogen population reaches its maximum (Fletcher & Gaze 2008). Effective crop termination is essential to reduce the pathogen population, allowing the next crop to ‘start clean’ and to break the cycle of diseases, such as Dry Bubble, which are perpetuated by continual on-farm re-infection.
By far the most effective termination procedure is cookout in situ, where the crop is treated undisturbed in the grow room with steam. An effective cookout prevents contamination of subsequent and adjacent crops which occurs when spent substrate contaminated with viable pathogens, pests and their larvae is removed from a grow room (Beyer 2018).
Cookout must kill pests and pathogens within the compost and netting on shelf farms and within the compost and tray timbers on tray farms. Cookout must also kill Agaricus mycelium and spores within the compost and tray timbers to prevent spread of virus diseases.
