Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Aug 1: The four-day National Workshop on the Polyphasic Identification of Macrofungi got underway here today at the Department of Botany, University of Jammu.
The national event, which is being organized under the project sanctioned by the National Mission for Himalayan Studies (NMHS), GB Pant National Institute of Himalayan Environment, Kosi-Katarmal, Almora (MoEF & CC, Govt of India) and supported by the Department of Wildlife Protection, J&K, aims at training research students/young faculty for field explorations and laboratory techniques for the identification and characterization of wild macrofungi which would help them set up their research base at their respective laboratories/institutions through morpho-taxonomic and molecular identification approaches.
Suresh K Gupta, Chief Wildlife Warden, Jammu and Kashmir, was the chief guest at the formal inauguration of the workshop. He highlighted the significance of the field-oriented training workshops on the characterization of wild mushrooms.
“For the better management and reclamation of barren lands ectomycorrhizal fungi are the perfect organisms,” he opined and hoped that such trainings would help distinguish between edible and poisonous mushrooms to avert incidents of mushroom poisoning.
Prof Yash Pal Sharma, Principal Investigator of the NMHS Project, informed that this field-cum-training workshop has been planned out for studying macrofungal diversity, their habit, habitat, and growth patterns in the field. Participants would be trained for studying morphological details of the collected mushroom specimens, their preservation, drying, and proper storage is the follow-up step after the field exercise, he added.
Earlier, Prof Veenu Kaul, Head, Department of Botany, JU, extended a formal welcome.
Resource persons are , Dr Dyutiparna Chakaraborty, Dr Aniket Ghosh and Dr Manoj Emanuel Hembrom from Botanical Survey of India, Kolkata; Dr Tahir Mehmood from the Department of Botany, University of Jammu.
The research participants are from Punjab University, Chandigarh; Punjabi University, Patiala; Delhi University, Kashmir University, SKUAST Jammu, Govt Degree College, Kishtwar and the University of Jammu.
Prof Geeta Sumbali, former Dean of Life Sciences, Prof Namrata Sharma, Prof Susheel Verma, Dr Sikander Pal, Dr Harish, Dr Skarma, Dr Madhu Raina, Dr Sajan Thakur, Research scholars, and the students also attended the inaugural proceeding s of the workshop. Shiny Singh conducted proceedings of the inaugural session.
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