Smart indoor farming helps scale up edible mushroom output in E China

Intelligent technologies are helping mushroom producers in eastern China to scale up their operations, creating growing environments that can ensure year-round production and even yield varieties that would otherwise not be possible in the region.

The indoor vertical mushroom farms in Quzhou, Zhejiang Province, are able to maintain constant temperature, humidity, and low light conditions required for various species. The technology has significantly raised annual yields of enoki, a long, thin mushroom that is popular across China.

"By introducing advanced digital production equipment, we have achieved year-round production, yielding an annual output of more than 20,000 tonnes of enoki mushrooms," said Xiong Houqiang, a technician at Zhejiang Junyuan Biotechnology Company Limited.

The innovations have allowed growers to produce many kinds of mushrooms that would never grow outdoors in Zhejiang. In China, porcini mushrooms mainly grow seasonally in the plateau of the southwestern province of Yunnan, but now these technologies help companies in the Zhejiang Province to produce this golden and plump variety.

In 2025, the edible mushroom industry in Quzhou achieved an annual output of of 49,100 tonnes thanks to these advancements.