Straw can also cultivate edible fungi.

In Huojia County, Henan Province, the output value of cultivated Pleurotus ostreatus with 1 mu of corn straw and Flammulina velutipes can be 1200 yuan and 3500 yuan respectively, and then deeply processed into Flammulina velutipes soy sauce and soft packaging.

Ma Wanfa, founder of Dingcun Township Edible Mushroom Base in Huojia County, successfully created the technology of cultivating edible fungi and deep processing of edible fungi with crop straw as a substitute, which found a new way to increase farmers' income.

Ma Wanfa is a top-notch talent in edible fungus technology in Huojia County. In 1994, he invested 1100 yuan to establish the Edible Fungi Association, which led farmers to cultivate edible fungi with cottonseed hulls. Later, he found that the cottonseed hull price was high and the effect was low, so he developed a high-yield cultivation technique of Pleurotus ostreatus with corncob as cultivation material, with the input-output ratio increased from 1:2 to 1:5. In 1997, Ma Wanfa successfully selected and bred "Ma Shi No.1" high-yield Pleurotus ostreatus, which was one of the high bioconversion rates of many Pleurotus ostreatus strains at that time. The fresh mushroom produced by Ma Wanfa was 0.1 yuan higher than the market price per kilogram.

In November 2002, Ma Wanfa established an edible mushroom base in Dingcun Township. When he saw the environmental pollution caused by the indiscriminate burning of straw in rural areas in summer and autumn, he planned to use crop straw as a substitute to cultivate edible fungi. So he went to Beijing and Zhengzhou, visited scientific research departments, visited colleges and universities, looked for scientific and technological materials, and invested more than 200,000 yuan to purchase scientific research instruments and equipment, and began to experiment with the cultivation of edible fungi. Through hundreds of experiments and thousands of improvements, Ma Wan method finally successfully developed the technology of using corn straw to cultivate edible mushrooms such as Pleurotus ostreatus and Flammulina velutipes. The basic production process is as follows: crushing the corn straw, adding raw materials such as water, lime and wet chicken manure, fermenting at high temperature, and then inoculating and bagging bacteria.

Using this technology to build a 200m2 greenhouse to cultivate edible fungi can transform 70 mu of corn straw a year, and each kilogram of corn straw can produce 1kg of fresh Pleurotus ostreatus or 0.15kg of fresh straw mushroom, and the output value of each mu of corn straw can be more than 1200 yuan.

There is no end to innovation. Ma Wanfa boldly carried out the research on the deep processing of edible fungi. Using his own Flammulina velutipes, he successfully produced Flammulina velutipes soft packaging cans and the first extra fresh soy sauce in China, registered with the State Trademark Office and obtained the bar code in the Chinese article coding center. Ma Wanfa thought that if all the more than 100000 mu of corn straw in the county were deeply processed to cultivate edible fungi, it would create an output value of more than 1 billion yuan. At present, this new technology is gradually being popularized throughout the county.