Morphology and molecular identification of some Lactarius and Russula species

Abstract

Lactarius and Russula are ectomycorrhiza fungi important for forest ecosystem, and many of which are edible mushrooms. In Basidiomycota, these genera are very diverse and possess complicated characters resulting in a number of under described species, especially in South East Asia. Molecular method, i.e. DNA barcoding has been increasingly used to assist taxonomical problem of mushrooms, especially in these two genera. Here, we collected nine specimens from Northeastern Thailand and identified by both morphology and DNA barcoding. We found that eight of the nine specimens were classified into Russula and the other one was classified into Lactarius. Of the nine specimens, seven specimens could be identified at the species level by morphology and the result was concordant with the barcoding. Based on morphology, the other two specimens could not be identified because of several unclear morphological characters. The barcoding result of these two specimens was also confusing because their sequences matched with several species from the database with equal %identities. Our study contributes to increase sequences of the described species in the database to assist further identification in these genera in the future.