Cultivating a morel mushroom industry in the North Central United States

View the project final report

Commodities

• Miscellaneous: mushrooms

Practices

• Crop Production: agroforestry, forest farming, high tunnels or hoop houses
• Education and Training: on-farm/ranch research, participatory research, workshop
• Production Systems: agroecosystems, morel production systems
• Sustainable Communities: urban agriculture

Morels (Morchella spp.) are iconic spring mushrooms in the North-Central Region of the United States and a high-value commodity in food markets. Recent discoveries on morel mating systems and exogenous nutrition have led to breakthroughs in morel cultivation in China, resulting in thousands of hectares of morel cultivation in China. These new techniques have not yet been introduced to the United States, but they have the potential to dramatically expand the US domestic market. Thousands of pounds of morels are picked and sold fresh across the North-Central Region every year. In springtime, when morel mushrooms naturally appear, they command a mean price of $35 per pound. Prices for morels out-of-season in the North Central Region exceed $60 per pound. These high prices have led to a heightened interest in developing supply chains that might allow for outdoor commercial morel production. 

This study aimed to advance outdoor cultivation techniques for black morels in the North Central Region. In parallel, we gauged market potential through surveys of established networks of mushroom foragers and vendors, as well as through broader consumer surveys. To help lessen risks for growers, we also assessed production costs and identified minimum yield levels that growers would need to reach in order to break even economically. High value morel crops can help make small farms more profitable, improving their economic sustainability while improving soil health and crop diversity.

This research capitalizes upon a recent understanding of sexual mating types and nutritional demands of black morels to establish productive morel isolates and agricultural systems in high-tunnel, low-tunnel and forest settings in the North Central Region. 

A reliable and consistent system for large-scale production of morels, together with informed marketing strategies, could provide great economic benefit to farmers across the region, thereby improving farm sustainability by integrating this high-value crop into agricultural systems. High-yielding production systems still need to be optimized before considering opportunities for co-cropping and rotating morel mushrooms alongside other crops, either through vertical or temporal stratification. 

Given the COVID pandemic at the start of this project, we pivoted to ZOOM meetings and SLACK for discussions with participants and to address questions and document the project. Results from this project are available through publications and a web resource that we developed. The farmers were very engaged and five farmers participated all four years of this project.

This project aimed to develop morel cultivation in forest, low- and high-tunnel systems, and will compare yield and market considerations among these systems. Project results from consumer surveys and panel focus groups helped to estimate market demand along with demographics and preferences pertaining to different morel production methods and species. Our results identified viable production practices, profitable yield thresholds, as well as pests and challenges with cultivating morels outdoors. Results demonstrate successes, but improved yields are needed for morels to become an agronomically and economically sustainable crop in the North-Central Region.