A

Training Report
Of
Winter Training Project at

On
MUSHROOM CULTIVATION
In the Partial Fulfillment of
Bachelor of Technology
Department of Food Technology

School of Vocational Studies and Applied Sciences

Gautam Buddha University
2018-19

Submitted by:
Name : Vanshika Shaniya Srivastava
B. Tech (Food Tech.) : 2nd year
Semester :3
Roll No. : 17/IFT/017
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I am very grateful for the opportunity to complete this training at

WEIKFIELD FOODS PVT.LIMITED.

I express my sincere thanks for the management for giving me this

opportunity to complete my winter training here, at Weikfield Foods. I am very
grateful for the guidance of the employees as well as the workers throughout my
entire training period. It was a wonderful learning experience for me, as I could
practically see and do all the processes which I shall later learn. Having prior
knowledge will always come handy to me.

My special thanks to Mr. Ashwini Malhotra (M.D) who permitted and

gave an opportunity to me and all other trainees to gain, enhance and expand
our knowledge.

express gratitude to all my teaching and non – teaching staff and

professors for their valuable guidance I’ve had until now and will have ahead
during my academic sessions.

This opportunity truly has been a big learning experience and one of the
many milestones in my academic and career development.

Sincerely,

Vanshika Shaniya Srivastava

18-01-2019

PAGE 1
 Company Profile
Over the past 60 years, Weikfield has spread sweetness in the lives of people through a
diverse portfolio of quality food products. Weikfield today, is one of the few iconic
brands which have flourished for over half a century. It has been a story of sweet
success, earning the trust of millions along the way. Weikfield has delighted many
generations with great taste, health and happiness and will continue to bring joy and
cheer to its customers for many decades to come.

Circa 1956 Weikfield set up operations in Pune, Maharashtra, with two products –
custard and corn flour. Today Weikfield products can be found in over 100000 retail
outlets across India and on 5 continents. Quality and reputation, the most valued assets
of the company, are visible across the range of over 50 products.

Products
Custard powder Corn flour

Baking powder Jelly crystals

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Mustard powder Drinking Chocolate

Caramel pudding mix Quick cooking oats

Fresh and processed mushrooms

PAGE 3
Specialty sauces

Cocoa powder Organic green tea

PAGE 4
Falooda mixes Cake mixes

Pasta
1. Gourmet pasta
a) Penne b) Fusilli

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 c) Spaghetti d) Elbow

2. Instant pasta
a) Cheesy creamy b) Tomato salsa

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 c) Chocolate pasta

Pasta sauce
1. White sauce 2. Red sauce

SALES

PAGE 7
The domestic network covers 20C & Agents, 900 distributors and stockist in every city of
the country. It offers through agents, distributors, retail outlets, and direct buyers in
North and South America, Europe, UK, middle east, Australia and Africa.

MISSION STATEMENT:

‘Food with future that’s the spirit of Weikfield’

“To produce and market trusted food brands, conforming to the highest international
standards of quality and convenience, for discerning customers in the Indian and global
market, with every Weikfield employee passionately dedicated to achieving the goals of
the organization.”

DEPARTMENTS IN WEIKFIELD:
1. Production Department
2. Quality Control and Quality Assurance Department
3. Research and Development Department
4. Finance and Accounting Department
5. HR Department
6. Engineering Department
7. Marketing Department

THE FRESH MUSHROOM DIVISION

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The fresh mushroom division of Weikfield is located in Bakori, Pune. As the name
suggest, this division is purely devoted for the production of mushrooms on a large scale
which are used locally and are also exported after being processed and preserved.

The main departments under the fresh mushroom division (FMD) are:

a) Composting
b) Quality control
c) Growing
d) Packaging

COMPOSTING
For the growth of mushroom, compost is the most vital medium for all the nutrition
which is to be provided to it.

The compost consists of a lot of components which are mixed in a specific proportion
for various purposes. They are as follows:

1) Wheat straw 25 tons

2) Soya bean straw 7 tons
3) Poultry waste 17.5 tons
4) Gypsum 5.5 tons
5) DOC of Caster 1200 kg

(All are approx. values used for the formation of 1 batch of compost)

The formation of compost used for growing mushrooms is a procedure of around 20

days in total.

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 Premixing

Prewetting

Poultry waste mixing

Pile formation

Turning

Fermentation - Phase I

In chamber resting

Refilling

Indoor process - Phase II

Levelling

Heating up

Pasteurisation

Cool down

Conditioning

Resting

Cool down

Spawn mixing

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1) Premixing
a) It is done in a pond which is a large pit like structure.
b) It consists of the components given above.
c) Rest – 1 day.

2) Prewetting
a) The premix is then made wet using water in a large quantity.
b) Rest – 1 day.

3) Poultry waste mixing

a) Waste acquired from poultry farms are added.
b) Consists of chicken waste, residual bones, etc.
c) Rest – 1 day.

4) Pile formation
a) The mixed components of the compost are arranged and placed in the form of
piles.
b) The moisture content here is 76%.
c) Rest – 1 day.

5) Turning
a) The compost kept in piles are turned upside down for the air to completely pass
through it.
b) The moisture content here is around 75%.
c) Rest – 1 day.

6) Fermentation
a) The turned soil is kept in one place for fermentation.
b) It is constantly fed water from top and air from underground blowers.
c) Rest – 1 day.
d) This level of compost is the Phase I compost.

7) In chamber resting
a) Phase I soil is kept in chambers for resting.
b) The moisture content here is 74% at a temperature of 83°C.
c) Rest - 3 days.

8) Refilling
a) While in chambers there is loss of moisture.

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 b) The moisture reaches about 72%.
c) In this stage, the moisture which has been lost is again added.
d) Rest - 3 days.

9) Indoor process – Phase II

a) After the addition of moisture, the compost is sealed in a chamber.
b) This is the indoor process.
c) Rest - 6 days.
d) This forms the Phase II compost.

10) Levelling
a) The compost kept in the chamber is levelled so that the air coming in through
the underground blowers spreads and passes throughout the compost evenly.

11) Heating up
a) While in chambers, the temperature is approximately 46°C.
b) In this step the temperature is increased from 46°C to 56°C.

12) Pasteurization
a) Pasteurization is done at 56°C for about 9 hours.
b) This is done to get rid of pathogens and save the good bacteria.

13) Cool down

a) The mixture is cooled down at 46°C for 9 hours.

14) Conditioning
a) In this step the temperature of the mixture is decreased 1°C continuously till it
attains a constant temperature.

15) Resting
a) Mixture is made to rest for 3 days in the chamber with the continuous flow of air
through the blowers.

16) Cool down

a) The compost mixture is cooled at a temperature of 24°C for 16 hours.
b) After this step the compost is ready for spawn mixing.

17) Spawn mixing

a) The ready compost is filled in bags each weighing 1 kg.

PAGE 12
 b) In each 1 kg bag, 110 gm of spawns are mixed.
c) These bags are now ready for harvesting mushrooms.

WHAT IS SPAWN?
For growing mushrooms, the fungus – mycelium is required. Fungus always requires a
medium to grow and multiply. For this a grain – wheat, jowar, bajra – anything can be
used. In Weikfield, bajra is used as a medium. With time the mycelium grows over the
grain which is then used as the seed for growing mushrooms and is sowed in the
compost. This grain-mycelium mixture is called a spawn.

CASING SOIL
This soil is used during the case run stage of growing. Using this soil is important
because it furthers the growth of mycelium in the compost, which further helps in the
increase in growth of mushrooms.

Ageing

Turning

Mixing

Pasteurisation

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 1. Ageing
a) The casing soil is made up of coco pith which mainly includes coconut
husk and fibers and porta soil.
b) The required amount of coco pith is kept in the open for a few days along
with a lot of water mixed with it.
c) This is the ageing process.

2. Turning
a) The aged coco pith is now put in the chamber.
b) In the chamber it is turned for the purpose of aeration.

3. Mixing
a) The coco pith is now mixed with porta soil.
b) 26 buckets coco pith + 2 buckets of porta soil + 12 kg calcium carbonate
give 1 batch of casing soil.

4. Pasteurization
a) The mixture is now pasteurized with the help of steam.
b) 5 kg steam is given to the mixture at a temperature of 64C.
c) Pasteurization helps in the prevention of bubbling and bacterial blotching
which may sometimes still occur.

The moisture content of the casing soil is about 73% – 74% and the pH is 7.7

The process of preparation of casing soil takes 4 days in total. If required, according to
the demand, this soil can also be made in one day.

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 GROWING
Activities involved in growing are:

Growing

Bag placement Bag tamping

Bag folding Bag covering

Cookout Pruning/pick off

Pest control

PAGE 15
1. Bag placement
a) The bags are placed in the growing rooms.
b) Each bag is of 10 kgs with spawn mixed in them already.
c) Each room has 5 columns and 4 rows.
d) Each room consists of about 4200 – 4300 bags.

2. Bag tamping
a) The bags are closed for about 14 days.
b) The compost temperature is high and the air temperature is low.
c) Temperature is maintained in between 22°C – 25°C

3. Bag folding
a) In this step, 5 kg casing soil is added on top of the bag.
b) The layer is 2 cm thick.

4. Bag covering
a) The bag is covered.
b) The temperature of compost is 27°C – 28°C.

5. Cookout
a) The carbon dioxide content in the room is decreased to around 800 ppm
b) Pressure is induced in the room for 3 days.
c) After three days the pin heads start growing.

6. Pruning/pick off
a) After being kept at the ideal temperature for the needed amount of
time, the mushrooms finally grow the required size and are harvested.
b) This is known as pick off or pruning.

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 7. Pest control
a) The pest control is done in order to protect the mushrooms from
infestation of insects and other organisms.
b) The mixture is made up of:
Water + Calcium chloride (50 ppm) + calcium hypochloride + formalin +
potassium permanganate + steam (60°C - 70°C)

The process of growing of mushroom is done in four stages:

Day after
Spawn run Case run Harvesting
flushing

1. Spawn run – SR
a) This continues for 14 days
b) During this period, the bags are stacked up in the growing room and
given the temperature of 22C and ideal amount of air.
c) At 4th or 5th day, fuzzing becomes visible
d) By the 14th day the bags are ready for the next step

2. Case run – CR
a) This continues for 5 days
b) No water used is used during this time.
c) The casing soil is added to each bag
d) 5 kg of soil per bag is layered at the top.
e) This step is important because the casing soil further increases the
growth of mycelium, thus increasing their rate.

PAGE 17
 f) During this time the amount of CO2 is decreased from a 8,000 – 10,000
ppm to 800 ppm.

3. Day after flushing – DAF

a) This continues for 10 days
b) The mushrooms are finally, after not being watered during casing, are
watered during this stage.
c) The water is sprayed onto the mushrooms known as fogging.

4. Harvesting
a) This continues for 15 days.
b) When the mushrooms are big enough, the harvesting starts.
c) During harvesting, sometimes, yellow coloured blotches can be found on
the mushrooms.
d) These mushrooms, though not dangerous to our health, are not sold in
the market.
e) For these blotches to be removed, sodium hypochloride solution of 50
ppm is sprayed on them.
f) The harvesting is carried out for 5 days.
g) There’s a gap of 3 days in between for some of the remaining pins to
grow into full mushrooms.
h) After 3 days, the mushrooms are harvested until all the good mushrooms
are picked off.
i) The ideal size of the mushroom is about 35 mm.

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PRODUCTION

Punnet
filling

Weighing

Packaging

Sealing

Labelling

Enclosing
in boxes

Dispatch

PAGE 19
1) Punnet filling
a) A punnet is a plastic container in which mushrooms are filled and packed.
b) Approximately 200 gm of mushroom is filled in each punnet.
c) 200 gm of mushroom contains approximately 8-10 mushrooms depending on
their size.
d) A worker removes these punnets from the tray and places them on the table.

2) Weighing
a) Next set of workers weigh these punnets on a kitchen weighing scale.
b) They remove or put mushrooms in the punnet depending upon the weight it
already was.
c) The maximum limit that can be reached is 210-215 gms.

3) Packaging
a) Another set of workers manually put these punnets in the plastic covers.
b) These covers have the company print on them and the product name.
c) After being packaged in seal pack covers, they are passed ahead.

4) Sealing
a) The next two workers seal the packets by removing the plastic from the sealing
strip and folding the bag.
b) The sealed punnets of mushrooms are now put on a conveyer belt for labelling.

5) Labelling
a) The bags of mushrooms. placed on the conveyer pass through a labelling
machine, which prints the details required on the bag.
b) The required details which are necessary to be printed are as follows:
i) Batch number
ii) Date of packaging
iii) Maximum retail price (MRP)
c) The shelf life of these mushrooms is 5 days which is already printed on the label.

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6) Enclosing in boxes
a) One worker has the work of filling a 4 kg or 10 kg box with these packed punnets
depending on the order received.
b) Each 4 kg box contains 20 punnets and each 10 kg box contains 50 punnets.
c) Each 10 kg box also contains slabs of ice in them depending where the batch is to
be sent.
d) If the batch is being sent to Bengaluru, it contains 3 slabs of ice in each box, for
Mumbai, 2 slabs in each box and so on.
e) Then the boxes are taped and ready for dispatch.

7) Dispatch
a) The taped-up boxes are then loaded in trucks or tempos and sent to their
respective locations.
b) Along with Bengaluru and Mumbai, the mushrooms are also transported to
Airport and Goa.

The shelf life of already packed boxes is maintained by refrigeration in a cold storage.

The temperature of the cold storage is around 9.5°C

Its capacity is 4 tons

The white button mushroom costs

a) 200 g bag – 45/-

b) 200 g punnet – 55/-
c) 1 kg bag – 150/-

Portobello mushroom

a) 1 kg – 200/-

The main wastage takes place while shuffling of punnets from the place of harvesting to
trays and then from trays to the table and also during weighing.

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 QUALITY CONTROL
What is quality?

It may be defined as the composition of those characteristics that differentiate

individual units of product and have significance in determining the degree of
acceptability of that unit by consumer.

Quality control means the maintenance of quality at levels and tolerance acceptable to
grow quality mushrooms. Quality control is a procedure intended to ensure that the
compost prepared is fertile enough to produce the maximum number of mushrooms in
a single go.

Devices which are used in QC lab for analysis:

1. Weighing balance
2. pH meter
3. Hot air oven
4. Wooden oven
5. Muffle furnace
6. Kjeldahl apparatus

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Tests for compost soil:

Moisture
content

Nitrogen Ash
content content
Compost
testing

Density pH

1. Moisture content
a) As the name suggests, this test is done to determine the moisture
content in the prepared compost.
b) The moisture of various stages of preparation of compost as well as that
of the various components of compost is calculated.

Stages Moisture (%)

 Pile 74 – 76

 Turning 73 – 74

 P–I 72 – 74

 RPI 72 – 73

 P – II 70 – 72

 Spawn mixing 60 – 64

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  Casing soil 72 – 74

Raw material Moisture (%)

 Wheat straw Max 12

 Poultry waste Max 25

 Gypsum 25 – 30

 Coco pith block Max 15

 Castor Max 10

 Coco pith loose Max 70

 Soil Max 10

 Soya straw Max 12

2. Ash content
a) Ash content ultimately leads to the determination of minerals.
b) In this test the muffle furnace is used.
c) When the sample of compost is burnt, all the organic substances burn
leaving behind the inorganic substances or the minerals in the compost.
d) The ash content is also determined from the various stages of
preparation of compost.

Stages Ash (%)

 Pile 24 – 25

 P–I 25 – 27

 RPI 22 – 24

 P – II 28 – 30

 Spawn mixing 32 – 36

3. pH

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 a) The determination of the pH is basically the determination of acidity or
the basicity of the compost sample.
b) The pH of various stages of preparation of compost as well as that of the
various components of compost is calculated.

Stages pH

 Pile 6.5 – 7

 Turning 6.5 – 7

 P–I 6.5 – 7.5

 RPI 7.5 – 7.7

 P – II 7.8 – 8.1

 Spawn mixing 7.6 – 7.8

 Casing soil 7.6 – 7.8

 4 CR 7.4 – 7.7

 Bag folding 6.4 – 6.7

Raw material pH

 Wheat straw 6.5 – 7.5

 Poultry waste 7.5 – 8.5

 Gypsum 2.5 – 3.5

 Coco pith block 6.5 – 7.5

 Castor 6.5 – 7.5

 Coco pith loose 6.5 – 7.5

 Soil 7.5 – 8.5

 Soya straw 7.0 – 8.5

4. Density

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 a) The density of the compost is determined by subtracting the weight of
the container from the total weight of the container and the sample
compost.

5. Nitrogen content
a) The nitrogen content of the compost is determined by its digestion and
then by using the Kjeldahl method.
b) This is ultimately used for the determination of ammonia.
c) The nitrogen content is also determined from the various stages of
preparation of compost.

Stages Nitrogen (%)

 Pile 1.5

 P–I 1.5 – 1.6

 RPI 1.65 – 1.70

 P – II 1.8 – 1.85

 Spawn mixing 2.1 – 2.25

FINDINGS AND SUGGESTIONS

STRENGTHS:
1. Mushroom manufacturing.
2. Manpower is good enough.
3. Healthy product.

WEAKNESSES:
1. Lack of hygiene.
2. High level of wastage.

CONCLUSION:

PAGE 26
I have learnt from this training how an industry works. The various qualities or skills a
person has to have in order to handle machines as well as the manpower which is
working for the company, along with the processes involved in the production of
mushrooms.

The experience I’ve had was truly amazing which can sure be useful to me in the future.

Thank you!

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