A checklist of Wild mushrooms of the Atewa range forest reserve, eastern region.

Abstract

Many forests in the tropics and sub-tropics are endowed with abundant genetic resources of edible and medicinal mushrooms. Most of these mushrooms remain unidentified, underutilized and understudied. For centuries now, mushrooms have not only been used as foods and therapeutics in folk medicine but in the present-day has found clinical uses. There is a growing interest in mushrooms on their dietetic, pharmacological, production of secondary metabolites and their bioactive properties. They have attracted much interest as functional foods because of properties they exhibit such as being anti-tumoral and anti-viral among others. Statistics in Ghana show that the country's total forest cover which stood at 8.2 million hectares at the turn of the 20th century has decreased to about 1.6 million hectares and it is estimated that its forest resource in the next 23 years will be totally lost if correct measures are not put in place. In view of this alarming situation in terms of the rate of desertification, the rationale for the project is to characterize the mushroom germplasm in some forests in Ghana with the view of conserving these mushrooms under threat some of which will serve as raw materials for the nutraceutical and functional food industries. Also, the project will create jobs for the youth and the unemployed in the communities surrounding these forests by engaging them in mushroom farming using agricultural residues, thus ensuring both food and income security