Mushrooms: (Importance, Pests and Diseases, their Management)

Mushrooms have immense values in nutraceutical-cum-medicinal, aesthetic and commercial aspects. It provides enriched food with proteins, minerals, vitamins etc. and serves as suitable alternative source of food especially to those who are vegetarians and suffer from malnutrition. It also provides employment opportunities especially to the rural youths and women. Its cultivation is cheap, low labour intensive, and requires not much land. It has wide ranging medicinal values too. In view of its importance, cultivation of mushroom is gaining momentum. Unfortunately, that is inviting serious pests and disease problems. Since there is no book providing information about all these aspects including general information about mushrooms, an attempt has been made in this book to include briefly all the available information under one cover which, it is expected, will cater basic needs of a large section of readers and researchers.