Mary Goretti Kariaga: The Kenyan scientist who pioneered mushroom farming in Kenya

By  Jeff Anthony

Novelist, Big Brother Africa 2 Kenyan representative

What you need to know:

• From plant pathology and sugarcane research to pioneering commercial mushroom production, Mary Goretti Kariaga built a remarkable career in Kenyan science and agriculture.
• Her journey took her from the University of Nairobi to Zimbabwe and back to Kenya, where she pioneered mushroom farming and trained aspiring growers.

On August 1, 1982, Mary Goretti Kariaga was in her third trimester of pregnancy with her first child when intense anxiety took hold of her. She was in her rented house in Arina, Kisumu, listening to KBC news of an emerging coup. She grew more worried as she wondered whether hospitals would be operational in time for her delivery.

Mary's father, John Joseph Odera, a successful entrepreneur, valued academic advancement. He funded her O-Levels at Loreto Girls in Limuru and her A-Levels at Kenya High School, instilling in her a strong drive for intellectual achievement. She enrolled at the University of Nairobi in 1975 and graduated four years later with a Bachelor of Education (Science).

She was recruited as an Agricultural Research Officer at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute in Kibos, Kisumu. After the attempted coup, Mary safely delivered her first child, Patricia, on the night of August 17, 1982, at Kisumu's Victoria Hospital. She later travelled to Port Louis to spend three months at the Mauritius Sugar Industry Institute, studying the agronomy of sugarcane cultivation.

In 1986, she began her master's degree in plant pathology at the University of Nairobi, focusing on fungal, bacterial and nematode diseases. Her thesis centred on parasitic nematodes of sugar cane, and she later authored an academic manual titled Plant Parasitic Nematodes Associated with Sugar Cane at the Nyanza Sugar Belt. She also looked into the challenges of communal sugarcane farming and completed her studies in 1988, a year before giving birth to her son, Stephen.

She became a member of African Women in Science and Engineering, an associate of the International Network of Women Engineers and Scientists, and a founding scholar of the Kenya Professional Association of Women in Agriculture and Environment. Her expertise led to her appointment at the Lake Basin Development Authority's Fibre Research Station in Kibos.

In 1995, she began lecturing at Maseno University before moving with her family to Harare, Zimbabwe, on January 5, 1999, after her husband, Billy, was employed by the University of Zimbabwe. Her deep interest in fungi led her to start a botanical programme to study mushroom cultivation. She began culturing and bulking spawn (mushroom seeds), and in 2000, she started producing Agaricus bisporus (button mushrooms) at the secondary entrance to her home, at the back of the University of Zimbabwe campus.

Mary held weekend mushroom training sessions for interested participants at her house and went on to study the production of other edible mushrooms, including Ganoderma lucidum, shiitake and Pleurotus ostreatus (oyster mushrooms).

In September 2001, she walked into Standard Chartered Bank on Bond Street at the Mount Pleasant Shopping Centre, within walking distance of the university. Suddenly, five armed men carrying AK-47 rifles rushed into the bank and ordered the crowd in Shona, "Vese rarai pasi! (Everybody lie down!).”

Because of the similarities between Shona and Swahili, both Bantu languages, Mary understood the order and lay face-down along with the other clients. An overweight white client appeared stunned and confused by the Shona commands until a rifle was pointed directly at his face. Because of his large belly, he ended up lying on his back instead of his stomach, while a terrified woman lying next to Mary began sobbing as the robbers collected money from the tellers.

In her book, The Woman Who Pioneered Mushroom Production in Kenya, Mary writes that minutes after the gunmen left with their loot, everyone remained frozen on the floor in fear. When a person walked in and whispered, “They've gone,” Mary was the first to get up and run out of the bank.

In 2002, she relocated to Kisumu, applied for a position at Maseno's Faculty of Botany, and began pursuing her long-term goal of fighting protein deficiency and raising income levels through mushroom production.

At the time, there were no individual commercial mushroom producers in Kenya. Mary set out to introduce mushroom farming to empower smallholder farmers using oyster mushrooms, which were highly resistant to infection, in high demand and had significant medicinal value.

Because of the uniqueness of her work in mushroom cultivation, Maseno called on her on July 29, 2004, to deliver the keynote presentation to President Mwai Kibaki at the annual Kisumu Agricultural Show. That morning, Kibaki, First Lady Lucy and their security detail listened in astonishment as Mary gave a compelling address on the potential of mushroom production.

Her passion caught the attention of KTN reporter David Ohito, who arranged an interview with Mary and filed a story with his colleague, sparking demand for mushrooms across Kenya. Mary began receiving calls from entrepreneurs requesting mushroom training, as interest in mushroom cultivation grew. She registered her company, Mount Pleasant Mushroom Consultants, named after her former residential suburb in Zimbabwe, and used it to partner different organisations.

She was later elected treasurer of the Universities' Academic Staff Union and negotiated a 50 per cent salary increment for lecturers during the 2007 nationwide strike, the highest lecturers' salary increment in Kenya's history.

In late 2007, Mary's research in sugarcane diseases caught the interest of the Faculty of Agriculture, Veterinary Science and Technology at Masinde Muliro University in Kakamega. She joined the institution and completed her PhD dissertation on Rice Blast, identifying a sequence of four races of the same pathogen, which were later registered at the National Centre for Biotechnology Information. Shortly after being promoted to senior lecturer at Masinde Muliro, she narrowly survived a harrowing carjacking at gunpoint at the entrance of her home.

The writer is a novelist, Big Brother Africa 2 Kenyan representative and founder of Jeff's Fitness Centre (@jeffbigbrother).