Abstract
<jats:p>Wild Lentinula edodes is distributed in many provinces of China, and southwestern China has the greatest genetic diversity of L. edodes germplasm. As determined by phylogenetic analyses of internal transcribed spacer (ITS) of ribosomal RNA (rRNA), L. edodes was re-solved into two non-sister lineages, known as Group I and Group V, and also referred to L. edodes and L. aff. edodes. In this study, the ITS fragments of 44 wild L. edodes strains, mainly from Yunnan Province of southwestern China, were cloned, sequenced, and analyzed. It revealed that eight strains contained both Group I and Group V ITS. The protoplast monokaryotization strains (PMSs) and single spore isolates (SSIs) were obtained from YAASM2342, whose mating types and ITS types were analyzed. The results confirmed that two heterokaryons of YAASM2342 contained Group I and Group V ITS, respectively. The strains of both Group I and Group V were present in the SSIs of each mating type at a ratio of ~1:1. Moreover, analyses of the population genomic dataset suggested that the re-covered genetic groups could not correspond to Group I and Group V. These results con-firmed that Group I and Group V of L. edodes belong to the same phylogenetic species.</jats:p>