00:00 Wide
of gardener collecting peat from bag
c.u.
peat going into container
Gardener
digging hole
c.u.
trowel in earth
Wide
– gardener removing plant from pot
c.u.
placing plant in garden
Wide
– scooping peat around plant
Wide
- mushrooms on display in greengrocers
c.u.
mushrooms
c.u.
price tag
Wide
– mushrooms being placed in bag
Horticulture
Research International sign
Warwick
HRI sign
Professor.
Noble walking to Mushroom Research Building
Guide Voice: Horticulturists at all levels,
from domestic gardeners to commercial food producers, have been
using peat as a growing medium for a long time. Increasing public
and environmental awareness of the damage this usage does, to a
diminishing resource, means the pressure is on to find viable
alternatives to the world’s peat resources.
Commercial mushroom production has always been one of the major
users of peat. Worldwide we consume in excess of 7 million tonnes
of mushrooms a year and their production is a large scale
commercial operation in a number of countries, many of which have
no peat resources of their own and have to import it.
Now researchers at Britain’s University of Warwick have
come up with a remarkable solution, addressing two environmental
problems in one go.
00:47 SOT:
Professor Ralph Noble, Mushroom Research
Team, Warwick HRI: “We’ve been
looking for alternatives to peat for mushroom casing for probably
around 12 years now. The difficulty is finding materials that
are sufficiently cheap and hold a lot of water rather like peat.
The material that we found probably four or five years ago is a
waste that’s produced from the mining and quarrying
industries. In the coal mining industry it’s referred to as
“multi-roll filter cake” and this is a black sludge
material that holds a lot of water (shows
example) you can see here it’s like a black
jelly. This material’s very difficult to dispose of as it
stays as a jelly, but for our purposes it’s suitable as it
holds a lot of water”.
01:33 c.u.
Coal tailings
c.u.
Dried lump of material being banged on desk
Focus
pull – hard to soft material
Pan
across mushroom beds
Wide
– Prof. Noble and colleague examining mushrooms
c.u.
hands and mushroom
Wide
looking up at Prof. Noble
Wide
of mushrooms in boxes
c.u.
National Trust Hanbury Hall sign
Exterior
– Hanbury Hall
Neil
Cook on motor buggy – Orangery in the background
Door
to mushroom house
Mushroom
casings on slate shelves
Tilt
down on Hanbury Hall and pan across gardens
Sign
to Mushroom House
c.u.
mushrooms
Guide Voice; The material, commonly referred to
as coal tailings, is difficult to dispose of because it is rocklike
when dry, but reverts to a jelly when water is added. This makes it
dangerous as landfill - but a perfect substitution in mushroom
casing. Typically it can be used to replace up to 30% of the dark
peat used in mushroom growing and continuing trials show that it
produces good yields of high quality mushrooms.
Hanbury Hall, a National Trust property in Worcestershire, has
one of the oldest Mushroom Houses in the world. Built in 1860 it
still uses the original slate shelves for growing its mushroom
beds. When the National Trust adopted a peat free policy at the end
of 2002 it was able to find suitable alternatives for all its
garden plants – but not for mushrooms and the mushroom house
was threatened with closure until Warwick HRI came up with its new
peat substitute.
02:30 SOT: Neil Cook, Head Gardener, Hanbury
Hall: “It could’ve meant that we
weren’t allowed to grow mushrooms again here at Hanbury Hall.
It was as serious as that so this research was very important to
us, we may have got special dispensation currently there is for
ericaceous plants until we can find an alternative, so we may have
got a short licence to carry on but this has solved all of our
problems.”
02:50 c.u.
and tilt down on mushrooms
Researcher
receiving mushroom from Prof. Noble
c.u.
hands and mushroom
c.u.
researcher
Pan
across bed of Portobello mushrooms
Guide Voice: The commercial mushroom industry
in the UK alone uses some 100,000 cubic metres of peat a year - a
material that takes many thousands of years to form and is home to
a variety of rare plants and animals. Warwick’s research
means we can now continue to enjoy our mushrooms at considerably
less threat to our environment
03.11 End
of cut piece
Additional Material
03:15 SOT: Prof. Ralph Noble:
“We’ve only looked at using this material in the
British mushroom growing industry and it’s probably used now
by about 20% of the mushroom growers in Britain. But of course in
other countries there are much larger industries. Countries that
don’t have peat supplies and have large mushroom industries
so there is potential in may other countries around the world to
use these wastes for growing mushrooms. Countries like USA, South
Africa, Australia”.
03:52 Prof.
Noble walks through Mushroom Research Building
04:04 c.u
and tilt up on mushroom bed
04:16 Pull
out from mushroom to reveal stacked beds
04:26 Pan
across front of Warwick HRI
04:33 END
