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Applications of Internet of Things in

Mushroom Farm Management
Mohamed Rawidean Mohd Kassim, Ibrahim Mat and Ismail Mat Yusoff
MIMOS, Ministry of International Trade and Industry,
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
{dean, ibm, ismail}@mimos.my

Abstract - Internet of Things (IoT) based monitoring
and control systems are widely used in a controlled
environment to manage agriculture farms including
mushroom farms. IoT can help to improve agricultural
and farming industries by reducing labour cost
through automation and increase the yield by
providing optimum conditions for growth. The
temperature, humidity, light intensity and CO2 are
some of the important parameters need to manage in a
mushroom farm and these data are collected through
wireless sensors. The implementation of this smart
mushroom system have optimized the usage of
resources such as water and fertilizer and also
maximized the quality and productivity of the
mushroom. In this project, the mushroom yield have
increased almost twice (192.6%) compared to
mushroom cultivation using conventional methods.
Keywords - Internet of Things, Wireless Sensor
Network (WSN), mushroom farm,
wireless sensors, humidity, temperature,
CO2
there is no continuous monitoring. The shiitake
(Lentinula Edodes) mushroom, widely marketed in
the world due to its medicinal values has great
potential in Malaysia. The Ministry of Agriculture
and Agro-based Industry is working together with
other related agencies to increase the growth of this
industry. One of the strategy is adopting smart
farming concept using IoT technologies.
Mushrooms are not vegetables and they belong to
the fungi world. Due to its richness in nutrients, they
possess many medical benefits such as decrease the
risk of obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Besides
that, mushrooms also impart unique medicinal
values like anti-cancer and anti-viral properties.
The environmental factors in a mushroom farm such
as humidity and temperature must be precisely
controlled due to its rapid changes during different
stages of growth. This definitely requires an
automated solution utilizing WSN. Thus, an
automated intelligent monitoring system is required
to manage the mushroom farms more efficiently.

I. INTRODUCTION
Internet of Things (IoT) has already introduced
innovations in various industries, which assisted in
increasing the effectiveness and reducing the costs of
business operations. IoT managed to make a
significant impact in agriculture industry by reducing
dependency on human resources and hard
machineries completely. Agriculture industry must
grasp IoT to feed 10 billion of global population by
2050[1].

The growing awareness about health and wellness

among people around the world increases the growth
of the global mushroom market [2, 3]. In Malaysia,
mushroom is among the high value agriculture
products that contributed about 1% to GDP in 2010.
In 2015, the mushroom contribution to GDP
increases to 2% through utilization of smart farming
technology [4]. Figure 1. Mushroom bags in a Smart Mushroom House

Mushroom farming is labour-intensive and requires Figure 1 shows a Smart Mushroom House, where
high level of precision. Most of the mushroom farms the critical environmental parameters are fully
in Malaysia are small-scaled with few workers and monitored and managed. Wireless Sensor Network

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(WSN) offers a powerful combination of distributed
sensing, computing and communication.
In Section 2, related works on mushroom monitoring
and controlling system by several authors is
explained. Section 3 will describe the mushroom
cultivation process. Section 4 will describe the
system architecture. Section 5 will detail out the
application software. The data analysis will be
explained in Section 6. Section 7 will highlight the
key issues and challenges. Finally, the paper
concludes in Section 8.
purpose environment monitoring and control
system. Furthermore, a low cost and easy-to-use
IoT-based mushroom farm management system for
mushroom farmers could hardly be found.
III. SHIITAKE MUSHROOM
CULTIVATION
There are few critical environmental parameters that
can affect the growth of the mushroom. In general,
these parameters include temperature, humidity,
light intensity, moisture and CO2.

II. RELATED WORK

In general, there are two category of environmental
parameters monitoring systems; indoor and outdoor
systems [6]. Indoor systems involve the monitoring
of environmental parameters inside buildings and
greenhouses. Plants and crops inside a greenhouse
are easier to implement and manage because the
conditions depends only on internal factors.

Li Zhao and Xuejun Zhu [7] developed an

environmental monitoring system for mushrooms.
This system is used to monitor temperature,
humidity, light intensity and carbon dioxide (CO2).
The system also has feedback controls in order to
create an optimum environment condition for the
mushroom growth.

Senarath et. al. [8] developed an automation system Figure 2. Shiitake (Lentinula Edodes) mushrooms
to solve cultivation issues in an oyster mushroom
Figure 2 shows the Shiitake mushrooms from a
farm. This system collect humidity and temperature
smart mushroom farm. CO2 concentration in the air
data and provides feedback control based on pre-
is one of the most important parameters in a
defined threshold values.
mushroom farm because it is the major factor for
obtaining high quality mushrooms. The optimum
Arjuna et. al. [9] developed a mushroom farm
values vary for different types of mushrooms.
monitoring and controlling system. The systems
Shiitake mushroom cultivation is very sensitive to
allows user to manage the temperature, humidity,
two other environmental parameters conditions;
carbon dioxide and light intensity using an Android-
temperature and humidity respectively.
based device and ThingSpeak platform. The system
also supports feedback control where the respective
Shiitake mushroom is very sensitive to
devices will be activated based on pre-defined
environmental factors compared to other plants due
values.
to the controlled environment conditions. Besides
CO2, the temperature and humidity parameters need
Rahali et. al. [10] developed a more complicated
to be monitored carefully.
monitoring and control system using GSM. Besides
monitoring, this system allows users to control the Table 1. Temperature and humidity requirement for
humidity, temperature and soil moisture through shiitake mushroom
SMS. A ZigBee-based environmental monitoring
system using ARM7 processor and environmental Area Humidity Temp-Day Temp-
sensors was developed. The sensors gather data such (%) (Celsius) Night
as temperature, soil moisture and humidity and (Celsius)
transmit the data through ZigBee communication Incubation 75-85 18-25 15-18
protocol [11]. Growth 85-95 22-25 12-15

The above mentioned systems are not designed as a

comprehensive system specifically for mushroom Table 1 shows the temperature and humidity
requirement for shiitake mushroom cultivation.
cultivation management but merely a general

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There are two phases in the shiitake mushroom

cultivation; incubation and growth. The temperature
and humidity requirements for each phase are
different.

Figure 3 shows the shiitake mushroom cultivation

process. The process start with the preparation of the
mushroom house. The second step is to spawn
inoculation using mushroom bags then the bags are
kept in Incubation Area (dark). After several weeks
the mushroom bags will be transferred from
Incubation Area to Growth Area. The purpose of this
movement is for the development of fruitbody.
Finally, the mushrooms will be harvested and
graded. The entire process will take roughly 3
months.
Figure 4. Systems Architecture

Figure 4 shows the systems architecture for Smart

Mushroom System (SMS). The system consists of
three main modules; a Smart Control Panel
(including a gateway), Sensor Systems and Mobile
Application Software. The integrated wireless
sensors will collect critical environmental data from
the mushroom house and sent the data to the Smart
Control Panel (SCP) using ZigBee communication
protocol.

SCP is a real-time embedded system designed to

manage the environment inside the mushroom
house. The SCP will collect the data from the sensor
nodes and then send these data to the Cloud through
GSM/GPRS. The SCP will also do feedback
controls based on the pre-defined threshold values.
For example, the fan will be turned on if the
temperature is above the maximum threshold value.

V. APPLICATION SOFTWARE

The Graphical User Interface (GUI) in the

application software provides user-friendly interface
and support user requests. The end users can access
real-time mushroom data, graphs and other
information related to mushroom cultivation
through their Android devices.

Figure 3. Mushroom cultivation process

IV. SYSTEMS ARCHITECTURE

In general, the mushroom management system will

monitor temperature, humidity and CO2 inside the
mushroom house. Besides, that the system will do
a feedback control based on pre-set temperature,
humidity and CO2 values.

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Figure 7. Carbon Dioxide data (Growth Area) from

22-23 Jan. 2019
Figure 5. The main GUI page for SMS
Besides temperature and humidity, carbon dioxide is
Figure 5 shows the main page of mobile application another critical parameter in a mushroom farm. The
for SMS. The real-time temperature, humidity and carbon dioxide data (in PPM) from Growth Area are
CO2 data collected inside the mushroom house are shown in Figure 7. The data shows the carbon
shown on this page. The users also can view the dioxide is higher at night.
data in graphs and other formats.
Table 2 shows the mushroom yield from two batches
of harvest from Smart Mushroom House (SMH) and
VI. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Conventional Mushroom House (CMH). In the first
batch the yield from SMH is 200% more than the
The temperature and humidity sensors data from yield from CMH. In the second batch the yield from
Growth Area are shown in Figure 6. The SMH is 185% more than the yield from CMH. This
temperature and humidity data are collected on 1st clearly shows that on average the SMH will generate
and 2nd November 2017. 192.5 % more mushrooms than the CMH.

Temperature (°C) and Humidity (%) Table 2. Yield from Smart Mushroom House
(22-23 Jan 2019)
Batch # Smart Conventional
100 Mushroom Mushroom
80 House – Yield House – Yield
(Kg) (Kg)
60
1 479.9 238.9
40
2 527.0 285.6
20
Temp Humidity
0
4:00:00
8:00:00
12:00:00
16:00:00
20:00:00
23:59:00
4:00:00
8:00:00
12:00:00
16:00:00
20:00:00
23:59:00

Table 3 shows the physical criteria of each

mushroom from SMH and CMH. There are some
significant differences in terms of average thickness
22 Jan 2019 23 Jan 2019 and average weight of each mushroom. The
mushrooms from SMH shows better growth
Figure 6. Temperature and humidity data (Growth Area) from compared to CMH.
22-23 Jan. 2019

The highest humidity value is roughly 83.0% and

highest temperature value is 21.0 degree Celsius.
The graph also shows that the humidity is very high
at night and there is a strong correlation between the
two parameters.

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Table 3. Physical criteria of mushroom f. Sensor Node Placement

Physical Smart Conventional The placement of sensor node is one of important
Criteria Mushroom Mushroom elements in WSN. The location and the number of
House House the sensor node must be sufficient so that the data
Average > 4 cm > 4 cm can be captured and transmitted smoothly.
diameter
Average > 2.6 cm > 2.3 cm g. Internet Connectivity
thickness In many remote rural locations, strong and reliable
Average 36 - 42 g 32 – 40 g internet connectivity is not available. This thwarts
weight the attempts to apply smart agriculture techniques at
such places. Intermittent connectivity will hinder the
VII. ISSUES AND CHALLENGES transmission of data and this may result in wrong
decisions such as over irrigation.
There are a number of issues and challenges
encountered while implementing this research
project particularly the WSN. These include energy VIII. CONCLUSIONS
management, data security and transmission range. The application of IoT technology in mushroom
farms allows the farmers to manage their farms
a. Energy Efficiency more efficiently. Besides, increasing the yield,
mushroom farmers are also indirectly increasing the
WSN sensor nodes involved in many activities such
competitiveness of the industry.
as sensing, processing and transmission. Each node
consumes huge amount of energy from battery to
In general, particularly this shiitake mushroom
accomplish all the activities. An energy
cultivation project in a smart mushroom house
management strategy is necessary to enhance the
shows tremendous improvement in terms of the
battery life [12].
quality and quantity of the mushroom harvested in
2 batches. The yield have increased to 192.6 % and
b. Data Management
the quality of the mushrooms also have increased in
WSNs need to collect and transfer data from sensor terms of average thickness and weight per
node to centralized base station (gateway) and this mushroom.
requires large amount of energy. Aggregation and
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