Pests

Where mushrooms are grown in well run purpose-built polythene clad houses, they are affected by only a few pests

Most of these pests live within the compost and therefore if pasteurisation is carried out effectively they rarely survive this process, so that to cause subsequent crop loss they must re-colonise the compost at cool down, spawning or soon after filling. The three main pests of mushroom crops are namely flies,mites and eelworms. Flies are represented by three groups, Sciarids, Phorids and Cecids.

Written by Maurice Armstrong

Prepared by Cathal Ellis, Crops and Horticulture Development Branch, CAFRE
22 Greenmount Road, Antrim, BT41 4PU Tel: 028 9442 6793