Two ectomycorrhizal mushrooms were collected namely Tricholoma saponaceum and Scleroderma
citrinum.
Occurrence of mycorrhizal fungal species was found to be very less when compared to Western Ghats
(28 species reported by Natarajan et al. and Nilgiris
Biosphere (26 species reported by Natarajan et al. .
The present investigation suggests that this could be due to less tree species diversity and large scale cutting of trees for infrastructure development such as Metro
project, road widening process and housing projects.
This also could be attributed due to nutrients in soil and in the host plant.
Excess mineral fertilizers also decrease the mycorrhizal formation and production of sporocarps
, absence of sporocarps with the associating trees, an important source of identification and reduced regeneration potential of the fungal organisms, might have contributed to the less occurrence of mycorrhizal species.
The mushrooms collected in and around Bangalore were also assessed in terms of their economic importance.
(Table: 03 and 04; Fig 3) It was found that about 12 mushrooms were found to be edible, 18 were known for their medicinal values which was based on previous available literatures [32-36] and remaining 66 were found to be poisonous, inedible or their importance in unknown.
Further investigation could be done on these mushrooms to exploit their useful metabolites.