Physiological Factors Favoring Morphogenesis in Agaricomycetous Mushrooms

摘要

Various environmental factors affect morphogenesis in agaricomycetous mushrooms. Physical and chemical factors such as temperature, light, moisture, and chemicals serve as activators for spore germination and as stimulator or inducer for fruit body morphogenesis. Ecological role of some environmental factors would be speculated although other environmental factors remain undefined. Light drastically affects fruit body morphogenesis such as fruit body initiation, fruit body development, and pileus formation, etc. in most agaricomyceteous mushrooms. The effective wavelength of light for fruit body morphogenesis is from around 300 nm to 520 nm. In contrast, light does not drastically affect spore germination and vegetative growth of most agaricomyceteous mushrooms. Exposure to higher concentration of carbon dioxide up to 1%-20% accelerates basidiospore germination and vegetative growth of most wood rotting fungi whereas that to higher concentration of carbon dioxide, even a little higher concentration than natural air (0. 03%), inhibits those kinds of morphogenesis. Pileus formation is the most sensitive stage of fruit body morphogenesis to higher concentration of carbon dioxide and the sensitivity declining followed by fruit body development, fruit body initiation, spore germination, and vegetative growth. The basidiospores of wood rotting fungi germinate easily without any other treatments when they were provided enough amount of water. A certain chemical compound, propionic acid, n-butyric acid, furfural, or ammonia, etc. which would be one of principal characters of their habitats is required for the induction of basidiospore germination in mycorrhizal fungi and some ecological groups of fungi such as ammonia fungi and pyrophilous fungi. Biological active substances produced by other microbes are also effective for the morphogenesis in agaricomycetous mushrooms.