Biodiversity of mushrooms in Patharia forest of Sagar ( M . P . )-III

Patharia forest is situated on Vindhyan ranges at about 457.2-533.4 m above msl. It is mixed and dry deciduous type, dominated by Acacia species, Butea monosperma, Tectona grandis and ground flora consisting of Biophytum sensitivum, Cassia tora, Cynodon dactylon, Euphorbia geniculata, Heteropogon contortus, Lantana camara, Parthenium hysterophorus, etc. During the period of July 2011-July 2013, wild mushrooms were collected from the Patharia forest and 18 mushroom species belonging to 12 families were identified viz. Vascellum pratense, Lycoperdon pyriform, Coniophora puteana, Clitocybe geotrapa, Ganoderma tsugae, Microglossum virde, Panaeolus sphinctrinus, Pleurotus cornucopiae, Fomes fomentarius,, Tyromyces lacteus, Lenzites Betulina, Hypholoma elongatum, Pholiota highlandensis, Serpula lacrymans, Tremella mesenterica, Lepista nuda, Collybia butyracea and Omphalina ericetorum. Among them some are edible like L. nuda and Clitopilus prunulus which are used for culinary purposes; some are medicinal like G. tsugae, T. mesentrica M. viride which are used to prepare indigenous medicines using traditional techniques.


INTRODUCTION
A perusal of Indian literature indicates that little attention has been paid to mushroom ecology in India (Bakshi, 1974;Sharma and Lakhanpal, 1981;Saini and Atri, 1984;Natrajan, 1987;Kumar et al., 1990a, b).Most of the past researches on ecology of fungi from India were centered on mycorrhizic association with trees (Semwal et al., 2006).
Mushrooms are a wide group of fleshy fungi, which include bracket fungi, fairy clubs, toadstools, puffballs, stinkhorns, earthstars, bird's nest fungi and jelly fungi.Generally, they live as saprophytes, however some are severe agents of wood decay.All types of mushrooms are important in decomposition processes, because of their ability to degrade cellulose and other plant polymers.Besides, they serve as nature trash burners and soil replenishers, and thus help rejuvenate the ecosystem.Ample species of wild edible and medicinal mushrooms occur in all the biodiversity rich regions during the rainy season.They can be found on wood of living or dead trees, on the leaf litter, on the soil through the branching mycelial infiltration.Some mushrooms are found growing in association with trees of a particular family or genus (Arora, 2008;Karwa and Rai, 2010).
Biodiversity refers to the variety and variability among living organisms and ecological complexes in which they occur.It plays a significant role in nature by enriching soil, maintaining water and climate cycle, humidity, precipitation, conservation and recycling of waste materials into nutrients.It is believed that modern developmental activities are detrimental to biodiversity and it is felt that development is inversely proportional to biodiversity.Rich biodiversity is an indicator of healthy habitat and its potential to sustain life.India is top ten mega biodiversity centers and has ample species of wild mushrooms which occur during rainy season.There are about 2000 species of edible fungi known to man out of 10,000 species of macro-fungi.India is richer in flowering plants than any other country of its size; the fungal wealth of India is also expected to be equally diverse.Many studies have been done to document mushroom wealth from east, west, north and south India but the efforts made in central India including Chhatisgarh and Madhya Pradesh States received very limited attention (Thakur et al., 2006).Patharia forest of the Sagar region, M.P. is rich in plant biodiversity and the climatic conditions together made the natural habitat conducive for the occurrence of large number of mushrooms (Dehariya et al., 2010).
Patharia hills are situated near the north of Tropics of Cancer on Vindhyan peaks.This area has a undulating topography with low rising hills of Sagar.The hills rise up to a height of 300 feet on the eastern side of Sagar Lake.The ridges facing the lake are denuded of forest, but the top and the east facing slopes have growth of varying density.The average annual rainfall of Sagar is 48 inches.The average monthly minimum and maximum temperatures are recorded as 11.1 and 25°C in January, 25.8 and 40.5°C in May and 23.3 and 28.6°C in July.The hills are built of Deccan Trap consisting of agate basalt, laid horizontally with localized entrapping ash, clay and impure lime.Thus, it would seem that the topography and the biotic factors together create a dynamic system of habitats, through time and space, for the struggling growth on the hills (Mishra and Joshi, 1952) Forest wealth and conducive environmental condition provide good amount of substrates for the occurrence of various mushrooms in the region.Considering the importance of mushroom diversity in the Patharia forest, we undertook the present study with the objectives of get-ting information on (1) Wild edible mushrooms in Sagar?
(2) Research needed to be done in this area?

MATERIALS AND METHODS
During several visits from July 2011 to July 2013, we collected many species of mushrooms.For collection of the mushrooms various equipments such as hunting knife, plough, scissor, digging tools and wax paper pockets for wrapping the collected mushrooms were used.Collection sites other than Patharia forest are botanical garden, residential area in Sagar.
Collected specimens were then preserved in a liquid preservative (25:5:70 ml rectified alcohol + formalin + distilled water) (Hawksworth et al., 1995).Parts of the collected material were dried in a hot air oven.For identification of mushrooms various authentic keys (Arora, 1986;Singer, 1986;Hawksworth, 1974Hawksworth, , 1995;;Jorden 2000;Pegler and Spooner, 1997;Kuo, 2003;Upadhyay et al., 2008) were used.All the identified and un-identified specimens were deposited in the Museum, Department of Botany of Dr. H. S. Gour University, Sagar Madhya Pradesh.Length and width dimension of each mushroom collected were measured and photographs were taken.

RESULTS
During the investigation, mushrooms were collected and identified.At present, we were able to identified 18 genera belonging to 12 families.The identification of each organism was done on the basis of morphological features.The species identified were: Vascellum pratense, Lycoperdon pyriform, Coniophora puteana, Clitocybe geotrapa, Ganoderma tsugae, Microglossum virde, Panaeolus sphinctrinus, Pleurotus cornucopiae, Fomes fomentarius, Tyromyces lacteus, Lenzites Betulina, Hypholoma elongatum, Pholiota highlandensis, Serpula lacrymans, Tremella mesenterica, Lepista nuda, Collybia butyracea and Omphalina ericetorum (Figures 1  and 2).These species were recorded mostly during July to November.Among these species, some were edible, some poisonous but with medicinal value.Medicinal value: This mushroom possesses many different medicinal properties that dependent on the stage and environment of its growth (Jong andBrimingham, 1992, Liu, 1999).Traditionally, it has been widely used in treatment of hepatopathy, chronic hepatitis, nephritis, hypertension, arthritis, insomnia, bronchitis, asthma, gastric ulcers.Scientific studies have confirmed that substances extracted from the mushroom can reduce blood pressure, blood cholesterol and blood sugar levels (Hobbs, 1995).

DISCUSSION
Mushrooms are a nutritionally functional food and a source of physiologically beneficial and non-inventive medicines.In nature, mushrooms grow wild in almost all types of soils, on decaying organic matter, wooden stumps, etc.They appear in all seasons; however rains favor rapid growth when organic matter or its decomposition products are easily available.About 10,000 species within the overall fungal estimates of 1.5 million belong to this group.Mushrooms alone are represented by about 41,000 species, of which approximately 850 species are recorded from India (Manoharachary et al., 2005).Mushrooms are of ancient lineage, universal, remarkably beautiful and diverse in their form and in their interaction with other biota.
The occurrence of mushrooms on such familiar substrate as wood, litter and soil, implies a role for them in these microhabitats.Forest litter and forest soils are often literally permeated by fungal threads and tubes (collectively known as mycelium) often forming 'Rhizomorph', capable of free and extensive spread in litter and soil (Subramanian, 1995).
During the isolation of the mushrooms, it was observed that the species were very much dependent upon the habitat in which they occur.Species in this region were found to be associated with grasses, herbs, shrubs and trees.Their host specificity occurs due to complex pattern of interactions with the climate, the soil, plants and animals.Some species are specific only on dead woods or woody debris such as L. betulina, S. lacrymans, L. pyriform, P. highlandensis, C. puteana, T. lacteus.Some occur only on grassland and associated with grassroots such as V. pratense.Some species grow only on dung or enriched soil such as H. elongatum, C. butyracea and T. mesentrica.Some species are only association with living trees such as L. nuda, F. fomentarius, C. geotrapa.In some cases, it was observed that the morphological characters viz stipe length, stipe breadth, cap size, color conk size and brightness also varied with different host or localities, for example, two isolates of G. tsugae collected from living tree of D. sisoo and other from dead stump of D. regia showed wide variation in their size and color.The species which was collected from living tree of D. sisoo had greater conk than that collected from dead stumps of D. regia.
Thus, despite their growth on lignocellulosic wastes, to produce the mushroom fruiting bodies of great diversity in color, structure, size, texture, flavor and nutritional composition of essential amino acids and vitamins, unequivocally, they reflect on the magnificent capacities of the mushrooms for "biosynthesis" through different from "photosynthesis" (Rajarathnam et al., 1997).
Occurrence of mushrooms in forest has been reported by many workers such as Singer (1989) who reported 1320 species belonging to 129 genera under Agaricales.Sharma and Doshi (1990) who reported some new hosts of Pleurotus species from Rajasthan.Pradeep et al. (1998) reported occurrence of mushrooms from Western Ghats.Doshi and Sharma (1997) were recorded as wild mushrooms of Rajasthan.Thakur et al. (2006) reported mushroom wealth from Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh States.Karwa and Rai (2010) reported edible fungal diversity from central India.Recently, Thakur et al. (2011) reported biodiversity of mushrooms of Chhattisgarh region.Vishwakarma et al. (2011) reported some medicinal mushrooms of Uttarakhand.Dwivedi et al. (2012) reported biodiversity of mushrooms from Amarkantak biosphere reserve forest of central India.Pushpa and Purushothama (2012) reported mushrooms diversity of Karnataka.In recent years, we have (Dehariya et al., 2010;Dehariya and Vyas, 2013) found variety of mushrooms growing in the Patharia forest of Sagar, M.P.A recent study by Chandulal et al. (2013) provided information regarding diversity of mushrooms in Gujarat.
Occurrence of variety of mushrooms in the forest of India sub-continent suggests a close link between mushroom production and forest health.Though, no earlier data on the mushroom diversity corroborating forest diversity is available from this region, yet it is deduced that due to recent conservation strategies adopted by the forest department, number of plants are growing and have enriched the flora of Patharia forest.Thus, the rich diversity of the forest facilitate conducive environment for production of wild mushrooms.
The results of the present study show that some of the mushrooms act as mycorhizal fungi because of their close dependency on associated tree species.It is interesting to note that richness and abundance of the mushrooms was much higher in the thick forest whereas because destruction and thinning of the forest mushrooms were decreased.According to Kroper and Albee (1996) and Buee et al. (2005) fruit body production of some fungi adversely affected disturbed forest due to thinning of trees.However, according to Shaw et al. (2003) some mushrooms increase their fruit body production, when thinning is increased.According to Arnolds (1988), most healthy forest ecosystem housed more than 45% ecto mycorhhizal fungi.Thus, it is deduced that mushrooms are comparable to plants in requiring particular site, condition to thrive.
With this study, it could be concluded that Patharia forest housed number of wild mushroom which have immense importance in the maintenance of forest ecology and wealth, secondly some of the wild mushroom have been found to have great medicinal properties.These wild mushrooms are good source of income generation for the unemployed youth of the region and finally it gives us an impetus to search an indicator mushroom species for the forest management.