Skill development is the instrumental for primary off farm agriculture and allied income generation enterprise. Among the different off farm income generation enterprises, the mushroom production plays a crutial role in case of enhancing the income of the farming community. It is a profitable business for the farm women and rural youth now a day. In different corners of Cooch Behar district, the women and rural farm youth are getting their employment and augment their earning through mushroom production and there is very good demand in the market of it. The Cooch Behar KVK is organizing different skill development training programmes for the farm women and farm youth in agriculture and allied sectors. The mushroom production and marketing training programme is one of them. Mushroom production was started in the 18th century. At present, the world’s total edible and medicinal mushrooms production was estimated at over 34 million tons. China is the main producer of mushrooms producing over 30 million tons. This is accounted for about 87% of total production. In India, oyster mushroom have become the most popular for commercial production in recent years. India produced 129782 metric ton of mushroom in the year 2016(ICAR-DMR, Solan official data). The study was conducted at Cooch Behar district of West Bengal as the Cooch Behar KVK is acting as a single window system for imparting vocational training on mushroom cultivation. The purposive and random sampling procedures were followed to select the farm women and farm youth for the present study as respondents. The result shows that rural women are more involved in mushroom cultivation than rural youth. Most of the respondents participate in vocational training of mushroom cultivation to adopt mushroom cultivation as an enterprise. The impact shows use of locally available resources for production of different species of mushroom cultivation increased. It is shown that SHG groups get more profit than the individual enterprise. Mushroom growing is such an enterprise in which requirement of land is not a big issue so even landless farmers can augment their income through mushroom cultivation. The farm women and rural youth of the villages were surprised with the success of mushroom cultivation. They could not just believe such a good amount of net profit of ₹ 2500 to ₹3000 per month can be obtained with minimum investment. The study clearly indicates that imparting good numbers of skill based training programme with proper follow-up activities will help farm women and rural youth in employment generation and improve the livelihood of the farm family.

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