Sasidhara Rajaratnam and Thirunalasundari Thiagarajan
Identification of wild mushrooms is difficult considering visual and / or metabolic approaches. Molecular markers, especially DNA markers are quick and reliable to establish the identities of wild collections and are helpful in mushroom taxonomy. Hence an attempt was made in the study to characterize the wild mushrooms by molecular methods. Fungal material used in the present study is the fruiting body of wild mushrooms. The genomic DNA of the mushroom was extracted, the rDNA - ITS fragment of the genomic DNA was amplified using ITS1 and ITS4 primers and subjected to nucleotide sequence determination. The sequence thus determined was aligned using Jukes-Cantor Corrected Distance model. The aligned sequence (559bp) revealed 88% match score with Perenniporia sp. (GQ982890.1). Hence this wild mushroom which belongs to Agaricomycetes is a new addition to the Indian mushroom biodiversity.
