Main Characteristics of the Chinese Mushroom Production and Trade

Dunay, Anna – Fődi, Attila – Almádi, Bernadett – Vinogradov, Szergej

Keywords: mushroom production, China, export, import, medicinal mushrooms, canned food, M11, M21, N15

The paper introduces the role of China in the world’s mushroom production. Mushroom production is one of the youngest horticultural sectors, which underwent serious changes and modernization in the 20th century. Its main importance lies in the fact that mushroom production provides healthy, high quality, medicinal and functional food products and raw materials by using agricultural and forestry waste and by-products. Nowadays mushroom production faces many challenges and offers many opportunities in the fields of environmental protection, food science, medicine and the organization of work. China is the largest mushroom exporter of the world, which showed an exponential growth in the 1990s and ever since its production has grown. In the future, further developments and production growths may be predicted due to the reconstruction of the production systems, involving new species and varieties, installing new composting plants, implementing incentive and motivating schemes and automatization processes. At global level, product and technology developments and innovations are expected and a further broadening of produced mushroom species and varieties. This study explores and analyses the Chinese mushroom and mushroom product production based on wide literature analysis of Hungarian, Chinese and international sources and secondary databases.

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