Strain improvement and molecular characterization of mushrooms

Mushrooms are valued as highly tasty and nutritional food and considered to be a rich source of proteins, amino acids, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals.Therefore, mushrooms are called as functional food.The breeding of new strains has significantly improved, allowing the use of strains with high yield, quality, texture, colour and taste, increasing productivity and diminishing the use of chemicals for pest control.Strain improvement of mushroom species thus far has been based on conventional breeding methods.However, breeding of improved strains by conventional methods is a labour intensive and time-consuming procedure.Hence, the protoplast fusion has been used as a method to create mushroom hybrids, especially when using conventional methods cannot achieve this result.This technique opened up an new area of study, which has both fundamental and applied importance.Protoplast fusion is an appropriate method in creating hybrids of interspecific hybridization in mushrooms Strain improvement is one of the important methods in mushroom technology to improve its potential towards industrial and pharmaceutical point of view.The protoplast fusion is potentially important technique for genetic manipulation of industrially important fungi, obtaining valuable hybrids with disease resistance and for production of quality products in cultivated plants in agriculture.Combinations of desirable traits are possible in recent days through protoplast fusion.