ABSTRACT
Mushrooms are produce of high quality and high economic value and are regarded as avaluable health food in modern society. These are agroup of fungi that produce large Šeshy fruiting bodies that come up from the branching mycelia in„ltrating the soil or dead litter or in the wood of livingor dead trees during monsoon season after thunder and rains. These macrofungi have nearly been always around, with a very long and interesting history. The early civilization of Greeks, Egyptians, Romans, Chinese, and Mexicans appreciated mushrooms both as delicacy and as therapeutic agents and used them often in religious ceremonies. Greeks regarded them as “strength food” for warriors while Romans considered them as “food of gods” and the Chinese prized mushrooms as “elixir of life.” The mushrooms were worshipped (mycolatry) and consumed (mycophagy) as hallucinogens by the Mexican Indians. The Aztecs of South America referred agroup of mushrooms as “teonanacatl” (god’s Šesh) and worshipped these as being divine. Currently, the number of recognized mushroom species has been reported to be about 14,000 (Hawksworth, 2001). Of these, about 7,000 species are considered to possess varying degrees of edibility and almost 3,000 species from 31 genera are regarded as prime edible mushrooms (Tewari, 2005). To date, only 200 of them are experimentally grown, 100 of them economically,about 20 cultivated commercially of which 10 have reached an industrial-scale production in many countries. Furthermore, about 2,000 are medicinal mushrooms with varieties of health bene„ts. The number of poisonous mushrooms is reported to be relatively small (approx. 1%), but
15.7.3 Carbohydrates and Fibers ......................................................... 537 15.7.4Minerals and Trace Elements ................................................... 537 15.7.5Vitamins ...................................................................................... 538
15.8 Medicinal Value ....................................................................................... 539 15.9 Growth Potential and Opportunities ....................................................544
