The goal is to “popularize” the product

Visited the medicinal mushroom production of Cordyceps medicinal mushrooms by Ms. Nguyen Thi Tien, Chairwoman and Director of Cordyceps Cooperative Cordyceps PN Binh Phuoc in Thanh Binh City, Bu Dop Border District, Binh Phuoc Province. We are amazed by their production results.

Tien is only in her twenties but has already mastered the technology to produce cordyceps, one of the rare and expensive medicinal herbs of our time.

Ms. Tien took us to each stage of production with state-of-the-art equipment and said that she was born and raised in the country of Binh Phuoc – the country of perennial industrial plants. After graduating from high school, she decided to study biotechnology herself, with a desire to chart a new direction for the local agribusiness. During her studies, she had the opportunity to get in touch with Mr. Ngo Kim Lai (born 1991 from Phu Yen) who succeeded and registered the copyright for the Cordyceps cultivation process.

Here she not only admired how Mr. Ngo Kim Lai overcame the difficulties of studying, working and researching mushroom science, but also realized the value of Cordyceps mushrooms. After her bachelor’s degree in biotechnology engineering and more than three years of employment at Vinamilk, the Covid-19 epidemic broke out. Realizing that health was a top priority, Woman chose Cordyceps to start a business and gradually made them “popular”. Product.

Ms. Tien concluded, “If you want to go fast, you need to work together” before starting a business. She gathered like-minded friends and founded the Cordyceps sinensis PN Binh Phuoc cooperative. The cooperative officially started operations at the end of 2022.

Although the cooperative has only 7 members, each member is very young and each has its own strengths, technical people and good communication people. Thanks to the promotion of collective strength, the cooperative has now reached a stable functioning. Every month, the production cooperative delivers almost 2,000 boxes of mushrooms to the market. Each 10g box is processed into products such as fresh mushroom, freeze-dried mushroom, wine, etc. at affordable prices, bringing in more than VND100 million in profit. /Month.

Take control of the technology

According to Ms. Tien, in order to succeed, she and her colleagues also had to pay a lot of money, although sometimes it seemed like giving up, because Cordyceps is a valuable drug, the original embryos had to be imported, so the price was very expensive. . On the other hand, this fungus usually lives in the cold highlands all year round and needs suitable nutrients and parasites for its growth.

While Binh Phuoc has quite a hot climate, during the raising process, the fungus grows slowly due to the heat shock, not to mention that due to the neglect of controlling the growing medium, the fungus infected with pesticides and other harmful substances and it dies. Series. Not succumbing to failure, Ms. Tien and her colleagues used available knowledge and boldly experimented with new technologies to solve the production problem.

Accordingly, careful selection of cultivars and growth media is required for successful cultivation and production, and the mushroom culture environment must be absolutely clean and meet strict standards of temperature and humidity, light, air, sound, etc. The stages of propagation, propagation, breeding and cultivation need to be invested and equipped with automatic equipment systems to reduce human and weather impact.

In particular, the multiplication and implantation of the fungal embryo is the most difficult stage. To ensure the quality and content of medicines, Ms. Tien uses mushroom embryos imported from Japan. Next, the fungal embryos must eliminate any external microbial factors to ensure they do not become infected before they can be transplanted. The culture medium commonly used is brown rice, which is locally available, strictly controlled, and safe.

After transplanting, the mushrooms are transferred to a cold room with an automatic fogging system and high-tech lighting. After a week, the fungus begins to produce silk, spreads evenly over the surface of the substrate, grows and develops evenly, beautifully and with a dark yellow color. In order to produce a complete cordyceps mushroom product, the mushrooms are further placed in a closed room at a temperature of 20 degrees Celsius or less and an average humidity above 85% for 90 days.

To test the medicinal properties, Ms. Tien sent mushroom samples to the Center for Experimental Analysis of the Ministry of Science and Technology of Ho Chi Minh City for testing.

Presenting the latest test results, Ms. Tien said that the medicinal content of the product was satisfactory according to the analysis, with the active ingredient cordycepin (the valuable active ingredient in cordyceps mushrooms) reaching 32.6mg/L, which is 1.5 times higher than other products on the market. That proves the results of the whole process of tinkering and researching without faltering Tien herself in particular and all members of the cooperative in general.

Application of digital platforms to product consumption

After successful production, Ms. Tien has focused on the application of digital platforms to product consumption to increase competitiveness and “popularize” products according to the motto “from production to consumption”. That is why she records every production process with a camera to ensure product transparency. Then deploy the data to e-commerce platforms and combine it with a live stream to showcase the uses and instructions on how to use the product…

“People’s living standards are improving, the demand for high-quality health products is quite high. Currently, 80% of the cooperative’s products are sold on technology platforms and online sales channels on e-commerce platforms. The remaining 20% ​​is mainly supplied to partners in bird nests in the province for them to build Cordyceps nests. As a result, the consumer market is becoming more open, providing greater motivation for the cooperative to further expand its scale and build a sales, marketing and brand development team.

In particular, most of the products made by the cooperative are sold at a very “soft” price, ranging only from 300,000 to 500,000 VND/box of 10g dried sublimated mushrooms. They can be bought and used,” Tien added.

Mr. Tran Van Thanh, Head of Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Bu Dop District, estimated that although PN Binh Phuoc Cordyceps Mushroom Cooperative is new in business, it is capturing customers through its quality products and diverse advertising opportunities on the platform. Technology.

As well as fresh cordyceps herbs, cordyceps soaked in honey, cordyceps wine…

“This is a relatively new economic development model in Bu Dop in particular and Binh Phuoc in general. Through practice, Ms. Tien’s model has achieved certain successes. We support the cooperative in the development of OCOP products, building a brand by investing in packaging and packaging to make the product more and more perfect and gradually reproduce the model.

“Hopefully, with his youth, Bu Dop will have more and more young people with clear and feasible business ideas and plans, so that every young person can develop the economy in their own hometown,” stressed Mr. Van Thanh.