Medicinal mushrooms in Italy and their ex situ conservation through culture collection

A wide variety of mushrooms, including the edible, nutraceutical and medicinal ones, is present in Italy, a small country characterized by a great habitat richness. Inevitably, the extensive action of many mycophiles collecting sporophores, mainly for culinary uses, can impact on this important source of biodiversity. In order to protect the rare taxa, also collecting their biological material for application purposes, conservation ex situ is suggested. Aims of the present work are: a) to investigate areas favourable to the development of wood-inhabiting basidioma; b) to identify the present species by means of the morphological approach; c) to isolate their mycelia in pure culture; d) to confirm their identification by molecular analysis. Wood-inhabiting fungi were collected from Italian Alps, Apennines, wood plains and Mediterranean areas. Pure culture isolation was carried out from fruiting bodies in experimental sterile conditions. The culture collection has been registered at the Mycological Laboratory of Pavia University (Italy). In few years about 150 species were isolated and, among them, some rare and precious taxa such as Ganoderma pfeifferi Bres., Laricifomes officinalis (Batsch) Kotl. & Pouzar, Lenzites warnieri Durieu & Mont. and Perenniporia meridionalis Decock & Staplers deserve to be mentioned. It is well known that medicinal mushroom bioactivities could depend not only on biological characteristics (i.e. the genetic profile) but also on the geographical origin and the substrate. Therefore, Italy could really become a new resource of different fungal ecotypes, characterized by different and potentially useful properties worthy to be investigated.