The project is sponsored by the West Africa Agricultural Productivity Programme (WAAPP). Mushrooms are well known and contribute food nutrients to the diet of many people especially the rural folks in several countries. They are normally collected from the wild but with the current rate of bush burning and deforestation, collection of mushrooms from the wild in Ghana is generally threatened, leaving protected forest reserves as the only remaining source. The emergence of small scale mushroom farms in several tropical and subtropical countries is aimed at widening the production base of non-traditional export crops and promoting the economic welfare of rural communities. There is the need therefore, to improve upon the appropriate substrate and technology for maximum cultivation of indigenous edible mushrooms to avoid the overdependence on the forest reserves or the cultivation of exotic mushrooms.
Ghana is endowed with enormous quantities of agricultural (e.g. cassava and yam peels) and forestry wastes and there is the need to utilise these, especially root and tuber wastes, to improve on the yield of edible and medicinal local mushrooms.