SAGO PALM 27: 15−16 (2019)

peculiar Mushroom cultivation on sago palms in solomon Islands
Yuzo Ebina1 and Tatsuji Nishikawa2
1JICA Volunteer in Solomon Islands, Forest Policy Section, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Department,

2Tatsuji Nishikawa, Chief Advisor, JICA Project on Capacity Development for Sustainable Forest Resources

Aomori Prefectural Government, 1-1-1 Nagashima, Aomori city, Aomori Prefecture, Japan
Management in Solomon Islands, P.O.Box 2046 Honiara, Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands

Keywords: Mushroom cultivation, Solomon Islands
Recent research by the Society of Sago PalmValues of Wild Types of Sago Mushrooms

Metroxylon warburgii, grow in the Solomon Islands.

Komuniboli, sago palms are felled for the main

Studies reported that three types of sago palms,

Metroxylon sagu, Metroxylon salomonense, andIn the Solomon Islands, sago palms are mainly used

for food (fruit and starch), construction materials(leaves, barks, and stems for roof, wall, and floor
materials), and carvings, handicrafts, or sinkers (fromseeds). Moreover, people in the Solomon Islands

cultivate and eat mushrooms that grow in the sago

palm’s decayed stem, which becomes a fungal bed forwild-type mushrooms. Although this practice wasknown, the actual conditions, such as wild-type
mushroom (Volvariella sp.) cultivation methods, had
not been clear.

The Japan International Cooperation Agency

Technical Cooperation Project on Capacity
Development for Sustainable Forest Resources

Management in the Solomon Islands set up two pilot

sites. Komuniboli, a village in Guadalcanal Province,(Volvariella sp.) That Grow Naturally in Manokwari,West Papua” in December 2015. However, inpurpose of leaf harvesting for roof materials andmushroom production without extracting the sago

palm's starch. This village's mushroom cultivation is arare case.

Komuniboli is located in the tributary basin of theMbokokimbo River in Guadalcanal, about 50 km eastof Honiara, the capital city of the Solomon Islands.

The altitude of the village and its surrounding area is
30–70 m above sea level, and the soil type is mainly
laterite / silty clay. The village community owned

approximately 350 ha of forest land, and the forest has

a long and thin topography sandwiched between a
stream and a relatively large swampland. In the forestarea, several small ridges and valleys exist, and thevalleys are generally wet. Approximately 1,000

Metroxylon salomonense and Metroxylon sagu areis one of the project’s pilot sites, where clustered sagopresent in the wet places. Natural regeneration ofMushroom cultivation in Indonesia and Papua New

that sago palms grow only in poor drainage areas, andpalm forests exist and are under villagers’ forest

management, including mushroom cultivation.
Guinea has been conducted by leaving the fallen stemof the sago palm and waiting for mushrooms to growin the fungus bed after starch extraction from the sago
palm's residue, as Dr. Barahima Abbas revealed in his

article “Morphological Characteristics and Nutritional

these sago palms might have been repeated, because

appropriate gaps exist in the forest. Villagers know
they manage the sago palm forests while using
maintained sago palms appropriately.

The villagers have long used sago palms forhousing materials and food and to continually produce
wild-type mushrooms (Volvariella sp.). After a sago

Y. Ebina et al.

16palm is felled, small mushrooms form from mycelium

number of mushrooms can be collected at one time

harvest, cook, and eat them. These mushrooms have

20 m in height, if a villager proceeds to decay themon several points of the decayed stem. When themushrooms become suitable in size, the people

never been sold outside the community. The villagers
know the sago palm stem's decay speed after felling,

the length of time until mushrooms grow, themushroom harvest yield, and so on. Therefore, as longas a healthy sago palm forest is maintained,
mushroom cultivation will probably continue.

The mushroom cultivation process is as follows:(1) cut down a sago palm at an appropriate time forthe purpose of harvesting the leaves for housingmaterials, (2) expand the area of the stem’s starchsurface to promote decay by natural rainfall, (3) findsmall mushrooms grown from their mycelium, and (4)harvest the mushrooms after formation of the mature
mushroom shape. In (2), the villagers use theirmushroom cultivation skills. They intentionally
remove the bark from a certain area of the felled sago
palm using a bush knife, thus promoting the stem’s
decay by rainfall, after predicting the required
mushroom yield.

By cutting the top side of the tree trunk as well as thebottom, the decay progresses from both sides, and it
becomes possible to collect many mushrooms. If thestem is cut into pieces of several meters, a great

because stem’s decay proceeds from both crosssections. For example, when cutting a sago palm aboutfrom both the root and top side of the stem, wild-type
mushroom harvesting can be continued forapproximately one year. After felling, the periodrequired to acquire sufficient decay for cultivating

mushrooms is about two or three months, but the decay
speed also differs between young and old sago palms.

The important point in Komuniboli’s mushroom

cultivation is that they villagers maintain and manage
their sago palm forest while moderately utilizing thesago palms. A common species of sago palm takes
approximately 10 years to mature and survives for 40years. Sago palms generally maintain their numberand planting area by natural regeneration, but it isdifficult to artificially plant and grow sago palms
because they only bear fruit once before dying.

Because the planting area and the number of sago

palms are decreasing in the Solomon Islands,

establishing a sustainable cultivation and protection
system is necessary. Since the challenge of sago palm

conservation overlaps with sustainable forest resource
management, the survey of mushroom cultivation
using the sago palm stem as a fungal bed will be
continuously conducted in the village.

Fig 1. Study of mushroom cultivation with sago palm stem