Genetic diversity of Pleurotus pulmonarius revealed by RAPD, ISSR, and SRAP fingerprinting.

Pleurotus pulmonarius is one of the most widely cultivated and popular edible fungi in the genus Pleurotus. Three molecular markers were used to analyze the genetic diversity of 15 Chinese P. pulmonarius cultivars. In total, 21 random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD), 20 inter-simple sequence repeat (ISSR), and 20 sequence-related amplified polymorphism (SRAP) primers or primer pairs were selected for generating data based on their clear banding profiles produced. With the use of these RAPD, ISSR, and SRAP primers or primer pairs, a total of 361 RAPD, 283 ISSR, and 131 SRAP fragments were detected, of which 287 (79.5 %) RAPD, 211 (74.6 %) ISSR, and 98 (74.8 %) SRAP fragments were polymorphic. Unweighted Pair-Group Method with Arithmetic Mean (UPGMA) trees of these three methods were structured similarly, grouping the 15 tested strains into four clades. Subsequently, visual DNA fingerprinting and cluster analysis were performed to evaluate the resolving power of the combined RAPD, ISSR, and SRAP markers in the differentiation among these strains. The results of this study demonstrated that each method above could efficiently differentiate P. pulmonarius cultivars and could thus be considered an efficient tool for surveying genetic diversity of P. pulmonarius.