Molecular characterization and cultivation of edible wild mushrooms, Lentinus sajor-caju, L. squarrosulus and Pleurotus tuber-regium from Sri Lanka

Tropical wild edible mushrooms are nutritious, delicious and economically important fungal bioresources. In this study, two edible Lentinus species and one Pleurotus species were collected from Central and Western provinces of Sri Lanka. After the initial morphological identification, growth rates and culture characteristics were observed in four different culture media. Genomic DNA was extracted and PCR amplifications of fungal barcode, nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacers 1, 2 and 5.8S (ITS) region were carried out. Molecular phylogenetic analyses confirmed the identity of the isolates as Lentinus squarrosulus, L. tuber-regium and Pleurotus sajor-caju. The possibilities of cultivation of the species collected were investigated using rice and corn as the spawn media, while rubber and mango saw dust were used as the basal media. A commercial P. ostreatus strain was used as a positive control strain alongside all experiments. All three newly collected species showed the highest growth rates on Potato Dextrose Agar (PDA) and the highest mycelial density on corn spawn. Mycelia of all the isolates showed the highest growth rate in mango saw dust medium. Pleurotus tuber-regium, L. sajor-caju and L. squarrosulus produced fruit bodies 69, 88 and 49 days after spawning respectively. Highest mean yield for P. tuber-regium was observed in rubber saw dust (110.617 g ± 15.828), for L. sajor-caju in mango saw dust (13.978 g ± 3.656) and for L. squarrosulus in rubber saw dust (51.350 g ± 0). Based on the available information, this is the first successful cultivation of L. sajor-caju and P. tuber-regium strains collected from Sri Lanka.