Linzhi mushroom planting gives impetus to poverty alleviation in Jingdong

In April, glossy ganoderma(Linzhi mushroom) start sprouting. At this booming season, we visited The Wild Glossy Ganoderma Artificial Cultivation Demonstration Base in Jingping Township nearby the Ailao Mountain National Nature Reserve, southwest Yunnan’s Jingdong Yi Autonomous County.

Wu Jianshao is from Zhejiang University and now serves as temporary vice mayor of Jingdong County. He told us the university is helping Jingdong fight poverty by taking advantage of local wild mushroom resources to develop an ecological industry.

In the green houses, we saw fleshy shoots of glossy ganoderma growing well. “These are improved varieties and they can release more ganoderma spores,” said Ye Dafu, a local villager and also a manager of the demonstration base.

“Ganoderma spores powder has good effect for health care,” said Ye. Accoring to him, glossy ganoderma begin to release spores in June, which are their seeds. But in the past, it was impossible to effectively collect the spores of wild glossy ganoderma. In artificial cultivation, glossy ganoderma are planted in green houses and each of them is bagged in order to collect the spores.

On the basis of wild glossy ganoderma domestication, Jingdong now is exploring a new model of poverty alleviation by developing a whole-industry chain which includes domestication, ecological planting, ganoderma spores powder process and brand sale. Currently, the county has set up four glossy ganoderma ecological planting bases. With planting area of 6.67 hectares and an output value of 15 million yuan, the project now covers 200 local households.

Text by Shenhao, Photos by Chenfei, Trans-edited by Zu Hongbing