Foreword

The discipline of biology that is devoted to studying fungi is termed mycology. These organisms are classified in a kingdom, characterized by heterotrophy meaning absorption of nutrients typically by secreting digesting enzymes into their environment. Fungi are abundant worldwide, and the diversity has been estimated at 5.1 to 12 million species by mycologists; among them, a minor fraction of about 1,40,000 species have been characterized and identified. A major part of the extant fungi on Earth is yet to be characterized. Non-culturable fungi in the environmental samples are characterized by constructing their genomes from metagenomes and sequencing internal transcribed spacers.

Fungi occur in normal as well as extreme environments. They perform an essential role in the decomposition of organic matter and have fundamental roles in nutrient cycling and exchange in the environment. Such functions are played by the consortia of fungi and other microbes which are referred to as microbiomes. They are free living or symbionts/parasites on plants and animals. The arrival of next-generation sequencing technology allows fungal genomes to be sequenced for phylogenetic studies up to the species level. Fungal and yeast genome sequencing projects have been launched to sequence 1000 fungal and budding yeast genomes.

Fungi have served a crucial role as model organisms for biological inquiry, such as brewer’s yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae; and pink bread mould, Neurosporacrassa. Major insights like the nature of the gene, autophagy, control of cell cycle, and how telomeres function have been made using morphologically simple organisms with complex cellular machinery similar to human cells. Because of their typically small genome sizes and life cycle stages with free-living haploid states, fungi have served as models for genome evolution and reconstruction of phylogenetic relationships using genome scale data.

Although fungi are relatively understudied, they are an essential, fascinating and biotechnologically useful group of organisms with an incredible biotechnological potential for industrial exploitation. Hyde and co-workers (Fungal Diversity, 2019, 97: 1-136) have recently detailed 50 ways in which fungi can be exploited. As compared to other biological systems (e.g. plants), fungi have the great advantage that they can be grown in large bioreactors on an industrial scale.

The laudable attempt of editing a book entitled ‘Sustainable Utilization of Fungi in Agriculture and industry’ is a welcome step by Dr. S. Ajmera and others. This book comprises 22 chapters, on various aspects of fungi, contributed by those engaged in teaching mycology/microbiology/biotechnology in various academic institutions. I wish to place on record my appreciation for the editors of the book. I sincerely hope and wish that graduate and post-graduate students, scholars and teachers in broad areas of botany, microbiology, biotechnology and Life Sciences will find this book useful.