PHYLOGENETIC STUDY OF WILD OYSTER MUSHROOMS COLLECTED FROM SUB-HIMALAYAN RANGE, PAKISTAN

Wild mushroom species, regarded as important part of the food, medicine, decorations and other environmental processes. Edible wild species require proper identification (morphological and molecular), Cultural requirements and environmental circumstances for domestication in order to fulfill worldwide food requirements. The present study was accompanied in unexploited hilly areas of sub-Himalayan range of Pakistan for the collection of mushroom flora, isolation and categorization of oyster mushroom. Forty-seven mushroom species belongs to twenty-nine genera were identified. Considerable flora was initiated in rainy season on decaying wood logs and Pleurotus possess extreme number of species. Eighteen specimens of Genus Pleurotus were confined and tissue cultured under hygienic conditions and proper identification was acknowledged molccularly through sequence-based markers (ITS1 and ITS4) with a size of 600-700 bp. ISSR markers showed polymorphic index content (0.70-0.84) and amplified fragment ranged from (250- 3000) bp and dendrogram grouped the specimens in to two main clusters, which further bifurcates into two and five clades respectively using Jaccard's coefficient. ISSR markers validated high degree of polymorphism and convey diversity through phylogenetic affiliations.