This presentation is about a type of Fungus called as Basiodiomycetes. It covers complete information about Basiodiomycetes characteristics, classification, reproduction and ecology.

1. LECTURE 1- Basiodiomycetes:
characteristics, classification,
reproduction and ecology
Presented By- Dhanmoni Kalita

3. Overview ofBASIODIOMYCOTA
 The Basidiomycota together with Ascomycota form the subkingdom Dikarya which is also known
as the “higher fungi” within the kingdom Fungi.
 Basidiomycetes are the most advanced and most commonly seen fungi as their fructifications are
often large and conspicuous
 Ex- mushrooms, puffballs, stinkhorns, bracket fungi, other polypores, jelly fungi, boletes,
chanterelles, earth stars, smuts, bunts, rusts, mirror yeast etc.
 They are also called club fungi
 This class contains about 30,000 species

5. BASIODIOMYCETES CHARACTERISTICS
 Basidiomycota are typically filamentous fungi composed of hyphae.
 Sexual reproduction does not involve sex organs, however they reproduce by basidium (spore bearing
organ)
 These specific spores are termed as basidiospores.
 Some of the Basidiomycota are asexual reproducers..
 Basidiomycetes confined to only living host plants in nature (parasitic)

6. Characteristics ofBasiodiomycetes
 The somatic phase consist of a well-developed, branched, and septate mycelium which is differentiated
into primary, secondary mycelium
 The cell wall is made up of chitin and glucans with 1,3 linked and 1,6 linked B- D – glucosyl units.
 Clamp connections are a kind of hyphal outgrowth that form when cells in dikaryotic hyphae divide

7. Classification ofBasiodiomycota
 Basiodiomycota comprise 3 subphyla, 52 orders, 177 families, 1,589 genera
 Classifiedd into three classes depending on basidia-
1. Basidiomycetes- produce basidia (multicellular fruiting body) includes Eg- mushroom, brackets,
puffballs, jelly fungi, stinkhorns etc.
Basidiomycetes is again classified into- Homobasidiomycetidaedo not form asexual spores and
Heterobasidiomycetidae form spore in the dikaryotic mycelium
2. Uredinomycetes- no basidia, teliospore produces basidia, obligate plant parasites, eg- rusts
3. Ustomycetes- no basidia, teliospore produces basidia, facultative plant parasites , eg- smuts

8. Reproductionof
Basiodiomycetes

10. Asexual Reproduction
 Basidiomycota reproduce asexually by either budding or asexual spore formation.
 Budding occurs when an outgrowth of the parent cell is separated into a new cell. Any cell in the organism
can bud.
 Asexual spore formation, however, most often takes place at the ends of specialized structures called
conidiophores.
 The septae of terminal cells become fully defined, dividing a random number of nuclei into individual cells.
The cell walls then thicken into a protective coat. The protected spores break off and are disbursed.

11. Vegetative Reproduction

12. Sexual Reproduction
 Sexual reproduction in Basiodiomycota takes place in the fruiting
body, in specialized structures called Basidia.
 The basidia itself formed by plasmogamy between mycelia from
two different spores
 Plasmogamy- when haploid basidiomycota mycelia fuse to form a
heterokaryotic cell with two or more nuclei, one from each parent
 In the gills of the fruiting body, karyogamy takes place
 Karyogamy- when nuclei of two different mating strains fuse,
giving rise to a diploid zygote that then undergoes meiosis. This is
the dikaryotic stage resulting in four haploid nuclei
 The nuclei then migrates to the terminus of the basidium and
form four individual projections. These projections are then
separated by cell walls to become spores

14. ECOLOGYOFBASIODIOMYCETES
 The basidiomycetes have diverse modes of nutrition, ranging from pathogens to saprotrophs and
mutualists
 Mycelium scavenges and transport plant nutrients from soil, and support the growth of the plants
 Many of the pathogens of economically important crops causing damping off, root rot and turf diseases
 Their contribution to the decay of plant and waste materials make them an important factor in the
carbon cycle
 Some form symbiotic relationship with the roots of vascular plants and with insects
 Basiodiomycetes displays a variety of mutualistic associations with plants, animal and algae
 Some of them are causative agents of most destructive diseases of our cereal crops
 One of the unusual formation of Basiodiomycota are known as fairy rings

15. Importance ofBasiodiomycetes
 Beneficial to forest ecosystems because they decompose rotten tissues or form some other symbiotic
relationship with trees
 Some of them are like chanterelles, are fungi supplying their partner tree with nitrogen.
 The fungal like mushrooms and puffballs are edible forms having high food value
 Some mushroom are ideal food which contains upto 35% protein and are rich in amino acids, lysine
and tryptophan
 Some contains anti cancer substance known as clavicin
 Some produce the hallucinogenic chemicals