Production and molecular characterization of somatic hybrids between Pleurotus florida and Lentinula edodes.

Nine inter-generic somatic hybrids named as pfle were produced through PEG-mediated protoplast fusion between Pleurotus florida and Lentinula edodes using double selection method. Hybridity of the newly developed strains was established on the basis of colony morphology, mycelial growth, hyphal traits, fruit-body productivity and inter single sequence repeat (ISSR) marker profiling. Hybrid population was assessed with different phenotypic variables by one-way analysis of variance. Principal component matrices were analyzed for the six phenotypic variables in scatter plot showing maximum positive correlation between each variable for all strains examined. Six ISSR primers generated 66 reproducible fragments with 98.48 % polymorphism. The dendrogram thus created based on unweighted pair-group method with mathematic averages method of clustering and Euclidean distance which exhibited three major groups between the parents and pfle hybrids. Though P. florida parent remained in one group but it showed different degrees of genetic distance with all the hybrid lines belonging to the other two groups while L. edodes was most distantly related to all the hybrid lines. L. edodes specific sequence-rich ISSR amplicon was recorded in all the hybrid lines and in L. edodes but not in P. florida. All the fruit body generating pfle hybrid lines could produce basidiocarp on paddy straw in sub-tropical climate and showed phenotypic resemblance to the P. florida parent.