A low-cost centralized IoT ecosystem for enhancing oyster mushroom cultivation

The consumption of mushrooms has skyrocketed in recent years worldwide. The majority of farmers in developing countries still rely on the traditional approach to mushroom cultivation. So, modern technology needs to be adopted to enhance productivity to meet local demand. In addition, farmers face complex supply chain problems, a lack of direct communication with agronomists, and frequent outbreaks of diseases. This paper presents a low-cost centralized IoT ecosystem for addressing the aforementioned issues. The ecosystem provides real-time monitoring and automation of mushroom farmhouses, agro-eCommerce for convenient trade, agronomist advisory support, and disease detection with recommendations for early disease diagnosis and remedy. A small farmhouse with two rooms was built to validate the system's performance. The favorable climatic condition was maintained for oyster mushroom cultivation in the controlled room, whereas the traditional method was followed in the ordinary room. The mushroom was cultivated for three consecutive seasons throughout the year in both rooms. We found that the total production in the controlled room exceeded the yield in the ordinary room by around 49%, provided the same batch of seeds was used in both cases. The disease detection model achieved an accuracy of 98.33%, where farmers can upload the suspected image to the IoT ecosystem and get the predicted disease with relevant suggestions. By utilizing this IoT ecosystem can assist farmers in maintaining the required climatic conditions, streamline the problem of intermediaries while facilitating information exchange with agronomists, and aid in early disease detection and remedy recommendations.