Fruit Body Formation of the Fusion Products Obtained on Interspecific Protoplast Fusion between Pleurotus Species

Recently, considerable attention has been paid to protoplast fusion and its application to strain improvement of edible mushrooms. However, little work has been performed to obtain interspecific hybrids of basidiomycetes, although the intraspeciflc fusion of Phanerochaete chrysosporium^ Coprinus macrorhizus2) and Pleurotus ostreatus^ has been reported. In the present paper, we report the interspecific protoplast fusion between four Pleurotus species and subsequent fruit body formation of the fusion products. The auxotrophy of the strains of Pleurotus species used is as follows: P. ostreatus lqu-14A, ileu"; P. columbinus 4f-lA, ade~; P. pulmo-