Breeding Mushrooms: State of the Art

摘要

Compared to animal and plant breeding, mushroom breeding is a late starter. This is not surprising since the worldwide production of mushrooms is small compared to many plant crops. The production of mushrooms, however, has increased ten-fold worldwide in the last forty years and is increasing now faster than ever before. Mushrooms are attractive organisms for breeding compared to plants. Especially the unique life cycle and short generation time of these fungi allow efficient breeding. Techniques developed in plant breeding are now also adopted in mushroom breeding. These include the use of molecular markers for single- and multi-gene encoded traits. This paper will describe the state of the art in mushroom breeding by discussing the main issues for mushroom breeding and giving examples of breeding in Agaricus bisporus and Pleurotus ostreatus.