Journal of Taiwan Agricultural Research

Author:Jin-Tong Chen, Jin-Torng Peng and Mei-Ju Lin*

Abstract:

    Southern poplar mushroom (strain TM01) is a newly explored edible mushroom in Taiwan. Due to its special fragrant and unique texture, the mushroom has become increasingly popular recently. Two strains of the willow-pine mushroom (strain LUB and LUW) are commercially available in Taiwan. Owing to the high similarity in morphological characteristics between the southern poplar mushroom and the willow-pine mushroom (strain LUB), these two mushrooms are considered the same in Taiwan. The morphological characteristics of fruit-bodies, spores size, spore print color of the three willow-pine mushroom strains (strain LUB, LUW and H911) and southern poplar mushroom (strain TM01) were compared in this study. Basidiospores of these mushrooms were collected for single spore isolation and also for intra-stock and inter-stock mating of their monokaryotic isolates. Results of the intra-stock mating demonstrated that all the four mushroom strains were tetrapolar heterothallic, and these of the inter-stock mating of the representative monokaryons of their 4 mating types showed that they were fully compatible. It strongly implicates that the four mushroom strains belong to the same species. The ITS (internal transcribed spacer regions) sequences of the four mushroom strains were compared with those deposited in the GenBank database of National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). The identity of ITS nucleotide sequences of TM01 (Acc. No. AY904341) is 98.6-99.1% with A. chaxingu (Acc. No. AY168832 and AY168833), but 87.8-88.3% with A. cylindracea. According to results of the inter-stock mating and molecular data, the newly cultivated edible mushroom southern poplar mushroom (strain TM01) in Taiwan was identified as A. chaxingu Huang. Besides, the two commercial strains (LUB and LUW) of willow-pine mushroom were also identified as A. chaxingu Huang.

Key words:Agrocybe chaxingu, Identification, ITS

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