Prevention and Control of Headless Flammulina velutipes

What should we do when the enoki mushroom has no head? This confuses many people. So today I will tell you how to prevent and treat the enoki mushroom without a head.

Introduction to Flammulina velutipes:

Flammulina velutipes only grow stipes but not caps, commonly known as Flammulina velutipes witches' broom disease or needle-tip mushrooms, which is a non-infectious physiological disease. When the cultivation bag or mushroom bottle changes from hyphae growth to fruiting body formation stage, clusters of mushroom buds appear, only stipes grow but no caps are formed. When the stipes extend to a certain length, branches appear at the top. After a certain period of growth, the small branches grow again. The small branches become thinner and weaker as they grow longer and droop, forming a cluster of hair-like hyphae, which is completely different from the normal growth of fruiting bodies. The stipes grow upward and the top swells to form a cap. Its cap stagnates in the young form of the primordium development, with a diameter of about 1-2 mm. The whole cluster of mushrooms is beard-like, and the individual mushrooms are short and pointed, without a cap, slightly thicker in the middle and lower parts, and shaped like a needle. The growth of fruiting bodies is severely inhibited, and there is almost no yield.

Prevention and Control of Headless Flammulina velutipes

The causes of the disease:

This is due to poor ventilation in the mushroom farm, high carbon dioxide concentration, and high humidity, which inhibit the growth of the cap. This disease is often seen in air-raid shelters, tunnels, and other planting places where the air is not circulating. For bag-grown or bottle-grown Flammulina velutipes, when the mycelium grows to a certain stage and turns to fruiting body formation, that is, after the primordium appears, proper ventilation and light stimulation should be maintained, and the humidity of the mushroom house should be reduced. At this stage, if the carbon dioxide concentration inside and outside the bottle and bag mouths accumulates too high, there is insufficient oxygen and lack of weak light stimulation, and the humidity is too high, the fruiting body will grow abnormally, only the stipe will grow without forming a cap, and branches will continue to appear at the top.

Prevention and treatment methods:

The mushroom production site must have good ventilation conditions. After the fruiting body primordium is formed, the bottle-grown Flammulina velutipes must first be cultured for 3-5 days to form young mushrooms, and then bagged for mushroom growth. After bagging, the bags must be lifted up and down for ventilation 1-2 times a day. For bagged Flammulina velutipes, ventilation must be increased immediately to reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide in the early stages of fruiting body growth. The covering can be opened to keep enough fresh air in the bag to promote the differentiation of the cap and the thickening of the stipe. After the cap develops normally, it can be managed according to the cultivation and management methods of commercial mushrooms. Once it is found that the mushroom buds are growing abnormally and the top of the stipe is forked and drooping, they must be removed in time to recreate environmental conditions that are conducive to the formation of fruiting bodies so that they can still grow normally.