Association of various fruiting body macromorphological traits with spore yield in Ganoderma Lingzhi (higher Basidiomycetes), a new medicinal mushroom from China.

To study the correlations and relationship between spore yield and various macromorphological traits of Ganoderma lingzhi, a field experiment was conducted in a randomized block design with 3 replications. Ten macromorphological traits, including pileus diameter, pileus crust thickness, context thickness, tube thickness, pileus thickness, stipe length, stipe diameter, stipe weight, pileus weight, and spore yield, were recorded for all of the tested strains. There was significant variation among the strains for all of the traits studied. The results indicated that the highest variation was observed in spore yield and pileus weight. Correlation studies revealed that among 9 macromorphological traits, only the pileus weight of the fruiting body was significantly positively correlated with spore yield (r2 = 0.674*). Pileus diameter showed significant positive association with pileus weight of fruiting body (r2 = 0.838*). Stepwise multiple regression analysis showed that pileus weight and spore yield had a linear relationship (spore yield = -21.95 + 1.51 * pileus weight). The coefficient of determination of stepwise regression analysis (r2 = 0.4543) revealed 45.43% variation in the spore yield because of its relationship with pileus weight. Regression coefficient (b = 1.51) showed that a unit (1 g) increase in the pileus weight of the fruiting body resulted in a proportional increase of 1.51 g in spore yield. The derived information would be very useful when selecting potentially breeding strains for future G. lingzhi improvement programs.