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).