Man’s attention is usually attracted to mushrooms by
the unusual shape of their fruitbodies which suddenly appear
after rains in striking quantities in fields and woodlands.
Edible mushrooms like Pleurotus are known to be
among the largest of fungi. Davis and Aegerter (2000)
defined mushroom as the fruit of certain fungi analogous
to apple on a tree. Chang and Miles (1991) called mushrooms
macrofungus with distinctive fruitbodies that are
large enough to be seen with the naked eye. Many fungi
that form mushrooms exist in mycorrhizal relationship
with trees, and this is one of the reasons why forests are
often generous to mushroom hunters (Ogunlana, 1978).
Some wild mushrooms are mycorrhizal ones and cannot
be cultivated unless the tree is also cultivated. These
mushrooms are sometimes available in the markets but
they are collected from the forests (Kuyper, 2002; Quimio,
1990). Mushrooms have been universally recognized
now as food and are grown on commercial scale in may
parts of the world including Nigeria. Pleurotus tuber regium