DJ Bhat Fungi

My visit to Dali University, Yunnan, China, as Visiting Professor... Part-2: Looking at microfungi .......

Microfungi

Fungi grow in diverse habitats and substrates. With a variety of digestive enzymes, fungi decompose dead organic matter of plant or animal origin and thereby aid in recycling the huge amount of waste that gets accumulated on the face of this earth. Fungi are considered as world’s best biodegraders...

As part of global/national biodiversity documentation programme, fungi are collected from different habitats, taxonomically identified and preserved in live or dead form in repositories and harbaria. Countries around the world including India have taken initiatives in this direction. While in service, along with my students I have done this exercise extensively with great interest and documented the micro-fungi of forests and freshwater streams of Western Ghats in southern India in a big way. Post-retirement, I offer free assistance in fungal identifications to needy institutions and scholars....

Aware of my expertise on fungal taxonomy, especially asexual-morph fungi, a couple of institutions invited me for short duration, seeking help. What is more exciting for me than seeing fungi...! It’s sheer joy that I derive from this exercise....

Aquatic Fungi in Dali University

Yunnan in south-west of China is a mountainous area. While travelling along the Kunming-Dali highway, we had glimpses of some of these mighty mountain peaks. There are several rivers and one of the major watercourses in the province being Mekong river which further flows down as boundaries between Laos and Myanmar and then between Laos and Thailand. Yunnan province is also known to have largest diversity of plant and animal life in China.

Prof. Hongyan Su, my host in Dali University, is handling a major research project aimed at exploring aquatic fungi of Yunnan province including the Mekong river upper catchment area. Along with students, she carried out numerous field trips to different rivers and sourced sizable quantity of fungal specimens which they processed further. They prepared neat slides of the fungi, examined them under microscope, took photo-micrographic pictures, wrote descriptions and cultured in agar media and further sequenced the fungal genomes.

On reaching Dali, from the very next day, I sat with them and looked at these fungi. I helped them to taxonomically identify and document the fungi. The aquatic fungi of Yunnan are undoubtedly very huge in their diversity. Besides, I gave a couple of class-room presentations and explained how to work and identify the fungi. No doubt, we encountered several novelties and to my great surprise I saw many of the fungi for the first time in my mycological journey. I knew many of those only in literature. Such an amazing fungal diversity we saw. Students of Prof Su are hard working, studious and methodical and more than that they are very eager to learn. Excellent pictures they took. Time ran speedily and meantime we saw numerous fungi....