Prospects of biodiversity and distribution of mushroom fungi in India

Abstract

Mushrooms are precious fungi, which exists as an important and integral component of the ecosystem. They are the macro or larger fungi which possess fleshy, subfleshy, or sometimes leathery, umbrella like fructifications, which bear their spore producing surface either on lamellae (gills) or lining the tubes, opening out by means of pores. Usually the lamellate members are called ‘mushrooms’ or “toadstools’ depending upon whether or not they are edible or poisonous and therefore the tube bearing poroid members, as boletes. Mushrooms are seasonal fungi, which occupy diverse niches in nature within the forest ecosystem. Different types of edible mushrooms are cultivated on large scale for commercial use and many more species of mushrooms grow wildly in nature which has much nutritional and medicinal value. They predominantly occur during the season and also during spring when the snow melts. In the globe, biodiversity includes not only many species that exist, but also the range of populations that makeup a species and the genetic diversity among individual life forms. Macrofungi are important economically due to their importance in food, medicine, biocontrol, chemical, biological and other industries. Macrofungi are diverse in their uses as food and medicine and a number of other species function as decomposers and also form mycorrhizal associations.