ASSESSMENTS OF MOLECULAR, MORPHOLOGICAL AND BIOCHEMICAL CHARACTERISTICS AMONG FOUR GENERA OF MUSHROOMS

A wide range of wild mushrooms inhabit natural ecosystems, generally in reaction to specific environmental conditions. Wild mushroom species are integral to the steppe and mountain ecosystems in Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Despite extensive investigation, the evolutionary relationships among the various strains remain mostly unknown. Furthermore, edible wild mushrooms contain substances that are nutritionally and biologically important for human consumption. There is a growing trend in the use of functional foods and traditional medicines derived from macro fungi owing to their numerous health benefits and rich nutrient contents. However, there remains a substantial gap in detailed scientific knowledge. Three molecular techniques were tested on sixty-three samples, including one farmed strain and sixty-two wild strains, for identification and genetic diversity as the first objective. This study also aimed to analyze the morpho-biochemical and chemical composition profiles and also evaluate the possible health benefits and risks of its biochemical constituents in cultivated and wild edible mushroom species collected from the Iraqi Kurdistan region. Phylogenetic analysis using Internal Transcribed Spacer (ITS) sequences identified two primary clades. A substantial aggregation of taxa was associated with the genera Agaricus, Agrocybe, Pleurotus and Amanita. A total of 373 polymorphic fragments were identified using markers such as conserved DNA-derived polymorphism (CDDP) and start codon target (SCoT). The CDDP and SCoT markers exhibited effects analogous to those of genetic diversity indices across several genera and species of mushrooms. CDDP exhibited a greater level of species-specific variance (23.74%) than SCoT markers (20.81%). CDDP (17 bands) and the SCoT (14.08 bands) markers exhibited high numbers of polymorphic bands per primer. The average polymorphism information content was 0.39 for both the CDDP and SCoT markers. In the clustering analysis, both methodologies categorized sixty-three samples into seven distinct groups. Three classes of mushroom species and genera were delineated using both markers. Amanita lividopallescens and Agrocybe aegerita showed the greatest genetic distance (0.48) for CDDP markers, while Agrocybe aegerita and Pleurotus columbinus showed the highest genetic dissimilarity (0.36) for SCoT markers. The combinatorial methods could effectively tell the difference between different strains of mushrooms. The significant genotypic diversity and sequenced genomes will offer an ideal basis for functional genomics studies of the mushroom strains. Significant variations were observed among the studied species in the morpho-biochemical characters. Amanita crocea (73.74 g), Amanita lividopallescens (58.54 g), and Amanita vittadinii (60.57 g) exhibited the highest mushroom weights. Pleurotus eryngii had the largest cap diameter (10.70 cm vertical, 9.04 cm horizontal).