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

2. Block Diagram

3. Expected sustainability results, projected resource savings