Advances in Macrofungi: Diversity, Ecology and Biotechnology discusses the diversity and ecology of edible, toxic, medicinal and mycorrhizal macrofungi; the impact of ectomycorrhizal fungi in terrestrial ecosystems, ectomycorrhizal complex in Boreal forests and commercial application of Pseudotsuga in silviculture; the nutritional evaluation and cultivation of edible wild mushrooms; the diversity of novel metabolites of macrofungi useful in food, pharmaceutical and cosmeceutical industries; mushrooms as tool for eco-friendly synthesis of nanoparticles and proteomics of edible and medicinal mushrooms. In addition, it covers experimental designs, methodological approaches, biogeochemical cycles, conceptual/hypothetical models and life history strategies, linking mycorrhizal diversity to plant performance, chemotaxonomy, role of mycorrhizae in forestry and macrofungi in nanotechnology. It provides a valuable resource to graduate, post-graduate and researchers (in botany, microbiology, ecology, biotechnology, forestry, life sciences and environmental sciences) to understand the diversity, ecology, therapeutic value, mutualistic associations and biotechnological potential of macrofungi.

Macrofungi have significant importance in human health, particularly in nutrition, medicine, pharmaceuticals, agriculture and industries. They occupy a variety of ecosystems such as terrestrial (agricultural lands, forests and deserts), freshwater (bogs and marshes) and maritime (mangroves and coastal sand dunes) habitats. Their ecosystem services like nutrition (humans and animals), medicinal pursuits (antibiotics and pharmaceuticals) and bioremediation (degradation of xenobiotics and insect control) potential are dependent on their diversity and ecological conditions. Macrofungal ecology serves as the basis for nutraceutical values, agricultural benefits, plant productivity, environmental protection and industrially valued biocomposites. This book focuses on various aspects of macrofungal distribution in diverse habitats, participation in organic matter decomposition, ectomycorrhizal associations and participation in biogeochemical cycles. This book reviews the current developments in macrofungal ecology in different habitats and their benefits. Due to the topics dealt with on macrofungal diversity, distribution, dynamics, lifestyles, ecosystem or substrate preferences and ecosystem services, this book is valuable to mycologists, botanists, zoologists, ecologists, foresters, geneticists, agronomists and field biologists.

The present volume by the author is based on the outcome of extensive explorations in the Himalayas for more than a decade. It incorporates the original research findings along with that based on literature survey. It is intended to provide a comprehensive account of an important group of fungi which has a direct bearing on wood industry and forest ecosystem besides commercial application in bioremediation and pollution control. It is the first step in providing the mycologists with consolidated, systematically up-to-date and illustrative monograph of wood-rotting fungi of Himalayas. Every year the students of the post graduate colleges and universities particularly Indian sub-continent go in for fungal forays to collect fungi which forms part of their course curriculum. This book will serve as a field manual for identification. The book has more than 240 color photographs and 123 plates of camera lucida drawings covering all the fungi which have been reported till-to-date from the study area.

Fungi of Cameroon is a contribution towards assessing the current macrofungal diversity associated with the ecosystems of Cameroon's southern forests, and evaluates the impact of deforestation and slash-and-burn on fungal communities and tracks the occurrence and changes to the fungal communities through the seasonal climatic variations (rainfall). The overall recorded species were new to the Mbalmayo forest reserve, while 75 of the described species were new to Cameroon, and eleven new mycobiota were described, plus one combination. The greatest fungal diversity was observed in forest stands, declining towards fallows and cropland. A distinct reduction of the diversity of wood and litter-dependent fungal species can be observed where land conversion takes place which is a definite threat to fungal species. As expected, seasonal variations fundamentally influence and govern the fruition and composition of the fungal communities studied.

Mycology, the study of fungi, originated as a subdiscipline of botany and was a des criptive discipline, largely neglected as an experimental science until the early years of this century. A seminal paper by Blakeslee in 1904 provided evidence for self incompatibility, termed "heterothallism", and stimulated interest in studies related to the control of sexual reproduction in fungi by mating-type specificities. Soon to follow was the demonstration that sexually reproducing fungi exhibit Mendelian inheritance and that it was possible to conduct formal genetic analysis with fungi. The names Burgetf, Kniep and Lindegren are all associated with this early period of fungal genet ics research. These studies and the discovery of penicillin by Fleming, who shared a Nobel Prize in 1945, provided further impetus for experimental research with fungi. Thus began a period of interest in mutation induction and analysis of mutants for biochemical traits. Such fundamental research, conducted largely with Neurospora crassa, led to the one gene: one enzyme hypothesis and to a second Nobel Prize for fungal research awarded to Beadle and Tatum in 1958. Fundamental research in biochemical genetics was extended to other fungi, especially to Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and by the mid-1960s fungal systems were much favored for studies in eukaryotic molecular biology and were soon able to compete with bacterial systems in the molecular arena.

The fifth order of the natural kingdom is made up of an estimated 1.5 million species of fungi, found in every habitat type worldwide. The Book of Fungi takes 600 of the most remarkable fleshy fungi from around the world and reproduces each at its actual size, in full colour, and accompanied by a scientific explanation of its distribution, habitat, association, abundance, growth form, spore colour and edibility. Location maps give at-a-glance indications of each species known global distribution, and specially commissioned engravings show different fruitbody forms and provide the vital statistics of height and diameter. Theres a place, too, for readers to discover the more bizarre habits of fungi from the predator that hunts its prey with lassos to the one that entices sows by releasing the pheromones of a wild boar. Mushrooms, morels, puffballs, toadstools, truffles, chanterelles fungi from habitats spanning the poles and the tropics, from the highest mountains to our own gardens are all on display in this definitive work.