Abstract

The demand for mushroom cultivation rapidly increases over years in Namibia as more people discovered its health and medical benefits, as well as the mushroom economic value. However, high temperatures at some parts of the country had made the cultivation difficult though watering in the mushroom houses was recommended as a measure to decrease temperature and rise up the humidity in the mushroom houses. In order to exploit the Namibian potential for mushroom cultivation it is essential to develop cultivation technologies for small scale farmers, organized communities before introducing it to modern large-scale industrial operations. In Namibia, there are large amounts of agricultural wastes sometimes, previously, considered to be largely unusable. These agricultural by-products readily available in rural and peri-urban communities can be used as substrate for mushroom cultivation which made the cultivation easier and effective to reduce demand for more food security. Hence in this paper challenges and future prospects of the mushroom cultivation are discussed.

Key words: Mushroom, oyster, agricultural waste, challenge cultivation, prospects.