Spatial and regional directory of tropical Auricularia mushrooms in Southwest, Nigeria

Bioremediation of wastelands and dumpsites in Africa is fast declining due to reduced mushroom populations. In the past, the forest of Africa was teaming with mushrooms, but nowadays; mushrooms are severely exploited, resulting in gradual drift to extinction. Mushrooms have the tendency to degrade recalcitrant wastes and absorb heavy metals (Bio-accumulation). Unless concerted efforts are made to rejuvenate or rescue the surviving mushroom population, Africa will one day be overshadowed by wastes. The mushroom diversity in Southwest, Nigeria was determined by both morphological and molecular markers, 14 primers (OPB-11, OPB-12, OPB-15, OPB-20, OPB-21, OPH-3, OPH-5, OPH-10, OPH-15, OPT-1, OPT-5, OPT-7, OPT-10 and OPT-19) produced polymorphism with the test samples under electrophoresis gel (PCR and RAPD). Using standard morphological markers, Auricularia auricula was found to be evenly distributed across 8 locations in Ekiti and Osun, 6 locations in Ogun, 5 locations in Oyo and 4 locations in Lagos. There was none identified in Ondo. Auricularia polytricha was found in abundance in all the locations in Ondo. Lagos only had 3 out of its outline Stations graced with the presence of A. polytricha, whereas, Ogun, Ekiti, Osun and Oyo had no records of A. polytricha. From the genetic dissimilarity chart, 6 clusters of mushroom, sub-characterized into 3 distinct species (Auricularia polytricha, A. auricula and an unrelated Auricularia outlier species) and 5 cultivars were obtained in the region of Southwest, Nigeria. The population of all the Auricularia mushrooms currently present in Southwest, Nigeria was effectively captioned (Location, type and identity) by this research.