Investigation of Suitable Land Conditions for the Introduction of Bed Log Cultivation in Rural Village of Lao PDR.

Abstract

With the goal of improving the income of local residents of agricultural mountain villages in Laos, an investigation was performed on land suitable for bed log cultivation of mushrooms in order to introduce such cultivation to agricultural villages there. In Japan, bed log cultivation of mushrooms is generally conducted within forest areas, but the results of the local study indicated that in those regions, edible mushrooms were not gathered from within forest areas, but rather from fallow lands remaining after slash-and-burn, which become dry easily and whose upper layers are not covered by trees. The edible mushrooms gathered in those areas were saprobes with a resistance to desiccation. Also, in fallow land there are large numbers of tree stumps and fallen trees which are a growing environment for saprobes, and the vapor pressure deficit is low throughout the year, making it an environment in which these tree stumps and fallen trees do not dry out easily. The results of this research study suggest that for bed log cultivation of mushrooms in Laos, it is possible to utilize fallow land whose upper layers are not covered by trees as they are in Japan.