Future Outlook

As consumers become more aware of the additional culinary characteristics offered by a variety of mushrooms, demand for oyster mushrooms will increase. The development of improved technology to cultivate each species more efficiently will allow the consumer price to decline. At the same time, product quality should increase, thus furthering demand.

It is anticipated that oyster mushroom production in the United States will continue to increase due to their relative ease of production. However, research is needed to extend the shelf life of these mushrooms and to improve consistency of production. Production of various species of Pleurotus allows growers to take advantage of the many colors of the fruiting body for marketing purposes. In the United States, some growers currently are marketing over-wrapped packages containing several species of mushrooms. To date, these have been well received by consumers.

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