In Malaysia, mushroom cultivation activity has been long existed. Mushrooms have been identified as one of the high-value commodities under Malaysia’s National Agro Food Policy (2011-2020). The government recognizes the mushroom industry to have a potential to be developed as demand is increasing in tandem with the increase in population and consumption. Currently, the cultivation activity is growing and thriving due to high demand in Malaysian market. The consumption of mushrooms per capita has been expected to increase from 1.0 kg in 2008 to 2.4 kg in 2020. Besides, there were 648 mushroom entrepreneurs in Peninsular Malaysia in 2008. The higher demand together with the supports from government to improve this industry in future, has gave an opportunity to entrepreneurs to keep venturing in this area. The demand of mushroom is increasing but in Malaysia, the number of cultivators and production is decreasing. This is due to the inconsistent environmental condition with high temperature of 32–35 °C and low humidity of 60%–70%.
Humidity and temperature affect on fruiting body of oyster mushroom. Optimal temperature and humidity is known as 13-16°C and > 80%. High and low temperature indicates > 16°C and < 12°C, respectively and high and low humidity indicates > 80% and < 60%. The morphology of the mushroom depends on the humidity and temperature. Oyster mushroom also can grow at moderate temperature ranging from 20℃ to 30 ℃.
In Malaysia, some studies have been conducted and results show that in a room temperature, the optimum humidity should be larger than 90% in order to get the optimum growth and yield of mushroom. Due to the high demand in our country and also in the world, the industry requires high technology that uses less labour but produces higher productivity. Hence, electronic based monitoring system should be developed to maintain the humidity as high as 90% at room temperature and the data must be sent to cloud for further development. Mushroom farmers can view the temperature and humidity data remotely and watering process can be done automatically to maintain the humidity. Information or database is also important since the number of mushroom entrepreneurs keep increasing due to the demand and support from government. Besides the hardware, the software also should be developed to ensure that the mushroom industry will be sustained and growing. The Graphical User Interface (GUI) must be attractive and informative since it will be a medium of communication among the mushroom entrepreneurs, mushroom farmers and government agency.

Project Proposal

1. High-level project introduction and performance expectation

Project Introduction

Mushroom is a well-known food for human consumption. It provides a great benefit to human body.  They are known to help lower cholesterol levels and are a great source of potassium, iron and protein. It is rich in Vitamin C, B complex and the protein content varies between 1.6% to 2.5%. Besides, mushroom has most of the mineral that are required by our body.  For example, the folic acid in oyster mushrooms helps to cure anaemia. It is suitable for people with hyper-tension, obesity and diabetes due to its low sodium to potassium ratio, starch, fat and calorific value. In short, there are a lot of benefits of mushroom for human consumption.

 Hence, it is not surprising if the demand for mushroom keeps increasing. The Global Mushroom Market was valued at 12.74 million tons (MT) in 2018 and is projected to reach 20.84 million tons (MT) by 2026, exhibiting a CAGR of 6.41% in the forecast period.

With high growth rate internationally and locally, and together with many government aid schemes, this industry should be ventured widely in our country. However, we have to face some challenges especially in humidity.

Oyster mushrooms are highly tolerant of variations in temperature, humidity, light levels and carbon dioxide levels, making it a great choice for Malaysia. In Malaysia, the optimum humidity should be 90%. Since the humidity is critical in mushroom farming, an automated system should be developed to maintain the humidity in order to get the optimum yield.

Application Scope

The automated system will be developed by using DE10-Nano Development Kit. It is a robust hardware design platform which combines dual core Arm Cortex A9 with FPGA that make it suitable for this application. For IoT application, the DE10- Nano development kit will be interfaced to a daughter card (through GPIO) which is called RFS board. The RFS board with Wifi capabilities has make it suitable for this application. The RFS board also has many sensors including temperature sensor and humidity sensor.  This system will use the temperature and humidity sensors. Humidity will be maintained at 90% at room temperature. If the humidity less than 90%, watering system will turn on automatically. If the humidity exceeds 90%, the watering system will turn off.

The reading of temperature and humidity will be sent to cloud and Microsoft Azure will be used as a server. Apps will be developed from here to enable users (farmer, entrepreneur and government body) to access the data. The apps can be as an info centre about mushroom in our country.

Basically, farmers can view the status of their farming plant especially temperature and humidity. Farmers also can update their yield in the apps. Entrepreneurs can search the product and information from the apps. Government agency can upload many info such as training, government aid scheme and market price to help entrepreneurs, farmers and public users to get the current information about mushroom.

Target Users

We will target Users with the following profile:

1.            Small and Medium mushroom farmers in Malaysia

2.            Mushroom Entrepreneurs

3.            Government Agency such as Farmers’ Organizations

Why Intel FPGA

This project will use DE10-Nano Development Kit. It is a robust design platform with many features have been developed on the platform together with dual core ARM Cortex A9 and FPGA Cyclone 5.  It also supports many daughter cards to enable our design to be realized on a given time frame. One of the daughter cards that will be used in this project is RFS board. It has Wifi capability for data transmission. These boards are also supported by Microsoft Azure that can be used as a server in collecting the data. Further development can be done based on the collected data.

Besides, the same boards also can be used for further enhancement of this project in future. The dual core ARM Cortex A9 with Neon engine and SIMD capability has made it suitable for digital signal processing especially for video application. The video application is important for future development to view the condition of the farming area for bigger cultivation.

2. Block Diagram

3. Expected sustainability results, projected resource savings

Task solved by the proposed system:

1. Watering system can be done automatically. Can improve the yield.

2. Watering system is activated when it is needed. Can safe water.

3. Labour cost can be reduced because it is an automated system.

4. Famers, entrepreneurs and public user can get information about mushroom very fast.

5. Government agency can monitor the cultivation activity and yield more efficiently.

4. Design Introduction

5. Functional description and implementation

6. Performance metrics, performance to expectation

7. Sustainability results, resource savings achieved

8. Conclusion