PRAGYA THAKUR, PhD Research Scholar,
 Department of Plant Pathology, 
Indira Gandhi Krishi Vishwavidyalaya, Raipur CG, India 492001
Dr. SUBUHI NISHAD, Programme Officer NSS (Girls Unit),
 College of Agriculture, IGKV, Raipur, (C.G.)

Introduction
Agriculture is a critical sector for many economies, particularly in rural areas, where farmers rely on traditional crops and livestock for their livelihoods. However, the challenges facing small-scale farmers, such as low productivity, fluctuating market prices, climate change, and limited access to resources, have made it increasingly difficult for them to secure stable income. As a result, there is a growing need for innovative solutions that can increase farm income while promoting sustainability. One promising approach is the production of value-added agricultural products, which are processed beyond their raw forms to enhance economic value. Among these, mushrooms have emerged as a highly beneficial crop for farmers, with immense potential to be developed into various value-added products that can significantly enhance their income.

Mushroom cultivation has emerged as a promising avenue in sustainable agriculture due to its low input requirements, high nutritional value, and minimal land dependency and agro-based enterprise with significant potential for rural development and livelihood enhancement. As an income-generating activity, it holds significant potential for empowering women, especially in rural and marginalized communities. A fast-growing, high-yielding crop that requires minimal land and inputs, mushrooms offer an ideal solution for small-scale farmers and landless labourer as well. Beyond fresh consumption, mushrooms can be processed into a variety of value-added mushroom products—such as mushroom pickles, powders, snacks, soups, biscuits and nutraceuticals—offer enhanced market opportunities beyond fresh produce, enabling women to engage in small-scale entrepreneurship, improve household incomes, and gain socio-economic independence, thereby increasing their shelf life, market value, and income potential. These products not only open new avenues for entrepreneurship but also contribute to food security and sustainable development in rural areas. By leveraging locally available resources and traditional knowledge, the production and commercialization of mushroom-based value-added products can play a vital role in generating employment, empowering women, and boosting the rural economy. This research explores the role of mushroom-based value-added products in fostering women's empowerment by enhancing livelihood options, promoting skill development, and facilitating community-based enterprise models.

Empowering Rural Women through Value Addition of Mushroom
In India’s heartlands, where agriculture remains the primary livelihood, rural women are often the silent contributors to household sustenance. Yet, limited access to income-generating opportunities restricts their potential. One innovative, scalable, and eco-friendly approach is transforming this narrative: mushroom cultivation and value addition. Mushrooms are not only rich in protein, vitamins, and fiber, but they also grow on agricultural waste, making them an ideal candidate for low-investment agribusiness. But the true potential lies not just in cultivation—it’s in transforming mushrooms into value-added products that fetch higher market returns and provide sustainable livelihoods for women. Across several states, rural women are producing mushroom-based products such as pickles, soup powders, dried mushrooms, and snacks. These products are in demand in urban health-conscious markets and through online platforms. Through small cooperatives and Self-Help Groups (SHGs), women are learning how to process, package, and market these products effectively.

A case study from Odisha, where a women’s SHG turned a modest mushroom training initiative into a thriving business, supplying to local markets and even e-commerce platforms. Their earnings have tripled, and their role in the household and community has significantly evolved—from homemakers to decision-makers. Government schemes like NRLM (National Rural Livelihood Mission) and MIDH (Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture) offer training, startup kits, and subsidies. Yet, scaling this initiative requires continued support in training, credit, and market linkages. With focused policy, skill development, and community support, mushroom-based enterprises can become a beacon of hope for rural women, enabling them to lead with dignity, contribute economically, and shape resilient rural economies.

Value Addition of Mushroom
Mushrooms have huge health and nutritional benefits and can solve many problems of under-nutrition and malnutrition. Despite this fact mushroom cultivation and its utilization is not catching up fast because mushrooms are highly perishable. Thus, it is important to process mushrooms into value added products which will not only cater to the protein and micronutrient requirement of masses but at the same time will solve the problem of short shelf-life and postharvest losses of mushrooms. Following are some technologies to process mushrooms into value added products with extended shelf life. There are popular mushroom based value-added products include mushroom pickles, mushroom powder, mushroom nuggets, mushroom papad, mushroom soup, mushroom biscuits, candy and mushroom chips etc.

Mushroom pickles

Ingredients of mushroom sour-sweet pickle

S. No.

Ingredients

Quantity

1.

Mushroom

 500 g

2.

Ginger

 15 g

3.

Garlic

8-10 pieces

4.

Turmeric powder

2 small spoon

5.

Red chili powder

2 small spoon

6.

Fenugreek seed powder

½ spoon

7.

Dry red chili

5-10 pieces

8.

Salt

As per taste

9.

Mustard oil

200 ml

10.

Acetic acid/ lemon

1 spoon

11.

Mustard seed

10 g

Initially wash and clean the mushrooms, then cut them into four pieces. Next, add water and lemon juice to a pot and keep it on gas. Next, add the mushrooms to the water and boil them. Finally, grind the garlic and ginger in a mixer to make a coarse paste. Heat oil in a non-stick pan over flame and add the mustard seeds and dry red chillies. Fry them for 10 seconds on medium heat. Next, add ginger-garlic paste to the pan and cook for 2 minutes. Finally, add the fenugreek powder, turmeric, and black salt, and mix. Then, add the tamarind paste and salt. Finally, remove the boiled mushrooms from the water and add them to the pan and mix thoroughly. Cook on medium heat for 3 to 4 minutes and turn off the gas. Mushroom pickle is ready. Keep it cool in a glass jar or bottle and taste it whenever you want.

Mushroom Powder

Ingredients of mushroom powder

S. No.

Ingredients

Quantity

1.

Sugar (crushed)

100 g

2.

Mushroom

2 kg

3.

Maida

As per need

4.

Vanilla essence

3-4 drops



Properly dehydrate Mushroom: Before you can turn your mushroom into nutritious powder, your fungi must first be dried. After mushroom are properly dried, it’s time to wipe the dust off your food processor and process them until they turn into a fine powder. If you are using a blender, you may need to pluse longer or spread your mushroom either a large spoon between pulse to ensure all chunks are completely grinded. Even after through blend, small chunks may still remain in your mixture. The best way to extend the freshness of your mushroom powder is to properly store while you can keep in a plastic locking container. Now that you have a generous serving of mushroom powder put it to use.

Mushroom Papad
Papad is a thin, crisp disc-shaped Indian snack food usually made from seasoned batter of peeled black gram flour (urd flour), lentils, chickpeas, rice, tapioca or potato, fried or cooked with dry heat. Papads can be supplemented for protein with mushroom either in the form of paste or dried powder in the batter prepared from other sources as mentioned below.

Ingredients used in the preparation of mushroom rice papad

S. No.

Ingredients

Quantity

1.

Rice/urd flour

 500 g

2.

Oyster mushroom

 1 kg

3.

Whey

As per need

4.

Salt

As per need

5.

Sesamum

100 g

6.

Spices

As per need

7.

potatoes

500 g

8.

water

500 ml


Papad a wholesome food with high protein content. The steps can be summarized as: Wash harvested mushrooms in water (containing 300 ppm KMS). Blanch mushrooms in hot water at 85°C for 5 min and then dip immediately in cold water. Cut mushrooms into halves or quarters and make a paste in commercial/ kitchen mixer grinder. Boil potatoes in a pressure cooker or vessel, peel and crush/grate boiled potatoes to a paste consistency Blend potato paste and mushroom paste in 50:50 ratio and add spices (Salt, chilli powder/ black pepper, cumin etc as per taste). Add KMS powder to the blend @ 300 ppm. Spread the papad batter on a polyethylene sheet in drying trays in appropriate round size (10 cm diameter) with uniform thickness (1-2 mm). Keep the trays in sun for sun drying or in tray drier at 50°C for 5-6 hr to reduce the moisture content to 5%. Peel off the dried papads from polyethylene film and pack in sets on 10-20 papads in one poly-bag. Store in a cool and dry place. For the consumption the product, it has to be fried at 170°C for 60 to 90 sec in cooking oil.

Mushroom Biscuits

Ingredients of mushroom biscuits

S. No.

Ingredients

Quantity

1.

Maida/ wheat flour

 1 kg

2.

Dalda /ghee

 100 g

3.

Sugar (crushed)

100 g

4.

Mushroom powder

30 g

5.

Vanilla essence

3-4 drops

6.

Baking powder

½ spoon

7.

Milk powder

2 spoon



Both button or oyster mushroom can be used to prepare delicious and nutritious mushroom biscuits using above ingredients. For making biscuits all the dry ingredients are finely ground and sieved. Then fat and sugar are mixed well for 5-7 minutes using Dough kneeder. These ingredients are then added to dough kneeder with other dry ingredients for dry mixing. Thereafter, water is added to make dough cohesive and homogenous and mixing is continued till fully done. Then dough is kept for 10 minutes covered with wet cloth. Thin sheets of dough (1.25 cm thick) are made and cut into different shapes of biscuits using different steel dies. These raw cut biscuits are then baked in hot oven (at 180°C) for 20 minutes and after cooling biscuits are ready for packaging.

Mushroom nuggets
For preparation of mushroom nuggets, mushroom powder (dried and coarsely ground mushrooms) is mixed with the Black gram (Urad) dal powder (1:8) and a paste is prepared by adding required quantity of water. Salt (2%) and red chilli powder (1%) are added to the prepared paste and round balls of 2-4 cm diameter are made. The prepared balls are spread over a steel tray and are sun dried. These mushroom nuggets can be straightaway deep fried and used as snacks or can be used in vegetable curry preparation.



Nutritional and Medicinal Importance of Mushroom
Nowadays people are more concerned about health and mushroom, being cholesterol free, is now accepted as an ideal food item for all age groups. The superior quality protein of mushroom supplements the carbohydrate rich, protein deficit cereal based Indian diet and it occupies a place between meat and vegetables which is an excellent source of vitamins and mineral, rich sources of vitamin B complex and vitamin C, is very important for healthy body. Minerals like potassium, sodium, phosphorus, copper, Zinc and magnesium present in mushroom proves a perfect food for young and old by providing nutritional benefit. It helps in the development of immune system, liver protection, enhances insulin secretion and helps to decrease blood glucose level. It also helps in an antibiotic and anti-depressant activity and prevention of diabetes and heart diseases.

Conclusion
Mushroom has been consumed as a nutritious food and dietary supplement in the Country whereas Chhattisgarh is very broad. There are many mushroom species cultivated in the Country among them oyster is cultivated extensively throughout the year. Although having some problems during production and marketing there is a huge prospect of mushroom business with the background of huge unemployment and malnutrition. Small scale mushroom farming has the opportunity to farmers and small entrepreneurs without much land, capital and technical knowledge to eradicate poverty within short time. Development of mushroom-based industry also creates a scope to export mushroom products, thus it can generate employment opportunity for unemployed.


Mushroom production and its value addition present a sustainable and scalable opportunity to improve rural livelihoods and empowering women. By integrating low-cost, locally available resources with training and market access, rural women can transform mushrooms into a variety of value-added products such as pickles, powders, soups, and snacks. Value addition of mushroom with other ingredients increases the nutrient value of the food product which helps to reduce the post-harvest losses from 80% to 20%. Value addition also helps to extend the shelf life of the mushroom products and made the product available throughout the year and it also adds variety to the diet. Empowering women through mushroom entrepreneurship is not just about income generation—it's about dignity, leadership, nutritional security and long-term community resilience. Furthermore, empowering women through this sector contributes to social equity, improved household well-being, and rural economic resilience. Therefore, targeted support through policy, skill development, infrastructure, and market linkages is essential to fully harness the potential of mushroom-based enterprises as a tool for women-led rural development, society and nation as a whole.