Van Den Munckhof-Vedder, M.: - Born during the post WWII years as the second child of eight, and daughter of a Dutch market gardener. So, we both are born and raised with 'dirt under the fingernails', which is a big help to speak a growers' language and for understanding the difficulties growing something for a profit. After first studying fashion, in order to support the family in making all clothes for the females, as well as for others, I changed, mainly due to my best friend Ellie's influence. Her Dad had a small mushroom farm and sometimes I helped them out. I've studied and worked at the Mushroom Training Centre where I also embraced the opportunity for putting my foreign languages to good use. Being the harvest supervisor and also helping out the widowed part-time secretary in the afternoon. Always eager to learn and it has all come in handy over the years, as I became an internationally recognized expert in mushroom harvesting, post harvesting and quality control. I've got a chance for reorganizing the harvesting procedures and introduced training programs at major farms in various countries. In 1993 we both became American Citizens and since then we permanently reside in Dublin, Georgia/USA. Although retired, we never lost our interest in the Mushroom Business, so we spent time to upgrade this book, thinking it still could help numerous growers and their workers to make the right decisions. Beside the fact that we always loved what we were doing, even more important is, that we ended up with a number of friends in many countries. By working on upgrading this book, we realized quite well that there are a certain number of conditions which differ from farm to farm and even from country to country. The basics however are still the same. Therefore, we tried to offer a combination of scientific facts with a good portion of practical experience, gained over a lifetime. Pieter J. C. Vedder, Mariette Van den Munckhof-Vedder, Dublin, Georgia/USA Spring 2020