Identification of puffball found in Chota Nagpur plateau through Molecular characterization

Abstract

Food security is one of the issues for growing population. The search for alternative food resources points towards rich protein content food – mushrooms. Certain puffballs are also consumed similar to mushrooms. Popularly known as Rugda or Putu in areas of Chota Nagpur plateau. (Srivastava and Soreng, 2012) Many binomial names are given on the basis of morphological characters. This current study is to find accurate and reliable method in the field of identification. The puffball was collected from forest located Khunti district. Washed and sterilized. Then the sample was treated with liquid nitrogen before Genomic DNA isolation through standard protocol of Doyle and Doyle (Doyle and Doyle 1987), Primer for ITS (Internal transcribed spacer) region was designed and then amplified by PCR, Amplicons were then processed for sequencing for Sanger method. Resultant sequence was searched for similarities in BLAST. The Molecular characterization process was found to be more reliable.