Mr Biddle, who has managed the farm since the 1940s, said: "Mushrooms have grown on this land for hundreds of years. But after Chernobyl there was not one single mushroom until 1990.
"We then had bumper mushroom crops until 2000 when they stopped growing again.
"Farmers do not need Geiger counters to know when their land has been contaminated. Most of those fields are grazing pastures where I don't use fertilizer."
Mr Biddle's claims support shocking new research revealed in the Daily Post last week that showed the number of children born with birth defects jumped by 76pc in Liverpool and 149pc in West Lancashire during the four years following the 1986 blast.
Former government statistician John Urqu-hart examined official figures and found the number of babies dying before the age of one in Liverpool rose by 40pc in the year of the blast.
The Newcastle-based researcher believes heavy rainfall over the North West in the days after the explosion led to one of the heaviest radiation fallouts in the country.
Mr Urquhart said: "Mushrooms are very delicate things and any irregularities in their growth would be interesting to look at.
"You do get coincidences in nature but the more of these kinds of observations we record, the more we can find out about the impact of radiation."
A spokeswoman for the National Farmers Union said: "It is only now that we are beginning to realise the impact of Chernobyl on humans and on farming.
"This farmer is probably quite right to link the effects on his fields to Chernobyl."
But scientists at the National Radiological Protection Board believe the level of fallout on the Wirral would not have been high enough to stop the growth of mushrooms.
Spokesman Dr Michael Clark said: "I will not rule it out but I think it unlikely that this is connected to Chernobyl."
News RSS Feed