Screening of Mushrooms for Polysaccharides

Mushrooms have been valued as high tasty nutritional and nutraceutical food throughout the world. At present 270 species of mushrooms are known to have various nutritional and therapeutic properties. Polysaccharides are the primary content of mushrooms that are used for their pharmaceutical properties as immunostimulators. Here, Mushrooms were screened for useful polysaccharides. Fungal fruiting bodies were collected in rainy season, isolated and maintained in malt agar medium, and screened for their endo- and exo-polysaccharides. The mushrooms screened in this study are good producers of exopolysaccharides (EPS) and intracellular polysaccharides (IPS). Ganoderma lucidum was the best producer of polysaccharide among all the isolates. Mushroom polysaccharides are well known for their antidiabetic, antitumor and hepatoprotective activities, and so are likely to be used in the preparation of novel drugs. It is suggested that a thorough study on the optimization and characterization of these polysaccharides and biomolecules is essential to exploit this mushroom on an industrial scale.