Knowledge regarding fungi of Pakistan endeavor variety of macro- and micro-fungi from different areas of the country. One of the major documents on fungal history of sub-continent is Butler and Bisby (1933) that provided a list of 2,351 fungi belongs to order Uredinales, perithecial stages of family Erysiphaceae (15 species) and sooty moulds (64 species) from British India. Seventy collections of Indian smuts were critically re-identified by Mundkur (1940). Mundkur (1938) studied and listed fungi from North western part of India. However, Butler and Bisby (1933) and Mundkur (1938) published around 200 species of order Uredinales from the area that represents Pakistan (formally known as West Pakistan before independence of East Pakistan). Then, Mundkur and Ahmad collaborated to work together for the description of different groups of fungi from Pakistan.

The earlier known collections of fungi from the regions that make up present day Pakistan i.e., West Punjab and Sindh, Punjab and KPK provinces, or some parts of Sindh province including Karachi, were made between 1948 and 1972 by several studies (Ahmad 1948, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1956a, 1956b, 1956c, 1969, 1972a, 1972b; Müller and Ahmed, 1955) and by Ghaffar in late 60's and early 70's (Ghaffar and Kafi, 1968; Ghaffar et al., 1971; Ghaffar and Abbas, 1972). Many species of coelomycetous fungi from southern parts of Pakistan were collected and described by Sutton and Abbas (1986), Abbas and Sutton (1988), Abbas et al. (1998, 1999, 2000a, 2000b).

Fungal species of order Agaricales, number of rust and smut species were described comprehensively by Ahmad (1980), Ono (1992) and, Ono and Kakishima (1992, 1993). Myco-flora was also contributed by various authors individually in the form of publications from specified areas instead of any monograph or booklet such as ‘Mushrooms of Kashmir’ (Gardezi 2003; Gardezi and Ayub 2005), Basidiomycota of Kaghan Valley (Sultana and Qureshi, 2007), fungi on mangrove plants (Tariq et al, 2006), checklist of the Lichens (Aptroot and Iqbal, 2010), checklist of Boletales (Sarwar anf Khalid, 2006; Razaq and Shahzad, 2016), checklist of Ascomycetes and Gasteromycetes of Kaghan Valley (Sultana et al., 2015), species diversity in Basidiomycota of district Malakand (Hussain, 2016) and records of Russula species (Razzaq et al., 2019).

The most eminent and influential mycologist in Pakistan was S. Ahmed (Sultan Ahmed). His contribution to botany and conservation is well known that laid the groundwork of our understanding to fungal myco-flora and huge taxonomic work for biodiversity in Pakistan. His comprehensive work recorded 1219 species in Pakistan and was published in 1997 (Ahmad et al., 1997). The second edition of fungi of Pakistan was reprint of first edition without any updated information, published in 2014 (Ahmad et al., 2014). Many of his collections were deposited in Mycological Herbarium of the Department of Botany, University of Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan, duplicates in Herb. I.M.I, Kew, Surrey, England and also in the Mycological Herbarium of USDA, Beltsville, MD, USA. Nothing is known about the fate of those early collections that were deposited in Mycological Herbarium in Pakistan and others, they are now probably all lost or destroyed. How we can trace and find their deposition record is still a question mark as those are not listed in the publications.

There are various culture collection centers across the country which are working for myco-flora isolation, identification, and deposition of various culture-able strains. First Fungal Culture Bank of Pakistan (FCBP) was established in 2003 at University of the Punjab (Bajwa, 2006). Among all, few of them have proper online catalogue describing the strain’s history, molecular evidence, or status of publication. Some published data is found having no clue about its disposition to any culture center (Butt et al., 2016; Abbas et al., 2016). Due to the unavailability of the published strains at collection centers, their viability is doubtful.

References:

Abbas, S.Q. and Sutton, B.C. (1988) An addition to Avettaea (Coelomycetes) from Pakistan. Trans. B. Mycol. Soc., 90, 491–494.

Abbas, S.Q., Sutton, B.C. and Ghaffar, A. (1998) Seimatosporiella gen. nov., an addition to Coelomycetes from Pakistan. Pak. J. Bot., 30, 271–278.

Abbas, S.Q., Sutton, B.C. and Ghaffar, A. (1999) New species of Coniothyrium on Salvadora from Pakistan. Pak. J. Bot., 31, 407–436.

Abbas, S.Q., Sutton, B.C. and Ghaffar, A. (2000a) An addition to Sphaeropsis from Pakistan. Pak. J. Bot., 32, 35-39.

Abbas, S.Q., Sutton, B.C. and Ghaffar, A. (2000b) An addition to Septoria from Pakistan. Pak. J. Bot., 32, 247–250.

Abbas, S.Q., Sutton, B.C. and Ghaffar, A. (2001) Cystotrichiopsis Abbas, Sutton and Ghaffar gen. nov., an addition to Coelomycetes from Pakistan. Pak. J. Bot., 33, 365–368.

Abbas, S.Q., Perveen, A., Riaz, S., Iftakhar, T.and Abbas. A. (2016) New fungal records on Psidium guajava from Pakistan. Proc. Pak. Acad. Sci.: B. Life and Environ Sci., 53, 111–119.

Ahmed, S. (1948) Fungi of Pakistan-1. Sydowia, 2: 72–79.

Ahmed, S. (1950) Fungi of Pakistan II. Sydowia, 4: 82–83.

Ahmed, S. (1951) Fungi of Pakistan III. Sydowia, 5: 390–395.

Ahmad, S. (1952) Gasteromycetes of West Pakistan. Punjab University Press Lahore, 1-92.

Ahmad, S. (1956a) Fungi of Pakistan. Biol. Soc. Pak. Lah. Mono., 1, 1–126.

Ahmad, S. (1956b) Uredinales of Pakistan. Biol., 2, 29–101.

Ahmad, S. (1956c) Ustilaginales of West Pakistan. Mycol. Papers, 64, 1–17.

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Ahmad, S. (1980) A contribution to the Agaricales of Pakistan. Bull. Mycol. Faisalabad, 1, 35–90.

Ahmad, S., Iqbal, S.H. and Khalid, A.N. (1997) Fungi of Pakistan. Mycological Society of Pakistan, Department of Botany, University of the Punjab, Lahore Pakistan ISBN 969-8368.

Ahmad, S., Bilal, C., Imran, C. and Maaria, C. (2014) Fungi of Pakistan. 2nd Edition.

Aptroot, A. and Iqbal, S.H. (2010) Annotated checklist of the Lichens of Pakistan, with reports of new records. Herz., 25, 211–229.

Bajwa, R. (2006) Scope of First Fungal Culture Bank of Pakistan. Mycopath., 4, 41−43.

Butt, H., Mukhtar, T., Batool, M. (2016) Spilocaea pyracanthae causing leaf scab on loquat in Pakistan. Bragant., 75, 76–78.

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Gardezi, S.R.A. (2003) Mushrooms of Kashmir IV. Asian J. Pl Sci., 2, 1126–1134.

Gardezi, S.R.A. and Ayub, N. (2005) Mushrooms of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, their collection, identification and descriptions. Archives of Phytopath Pl. Prot., 38, 53–68.

Ghaffar, A., and Abbass, S.Q. (1972) Fungi of Karachi-suppliment II. Pak. J. Bot., 4, 195–208.

Müller, E. and Ahmed, S. (1955) Über einige neue oder bemerkenswerte Ascomyceten aus Pakistan. I. (About some new or remarkable Ascomycetes from Pakistan. I.) Sydowia, 9: 233 –245.

Mundkur, B.B. (1938) Fungi of India. Suppl. I. Imp. Counci. Agri. Res. Inida. Sci. Mon., 12, 1–54.

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Ono, Y. (1992) Uredinales collected in Kaghan Valley, Pakistan. In: Cryptogamic flora of Pakistan, 1, 217–240.

Ono, Y. and Kakishima, M. (1992) Uredinales collected in Swat Valley, Pakistan. In: Cryptogamic flora of Pakistan, 1, 197–216.

Razaq, A. and Shahzad, S. (2016) New records of order Boletales from Pakistan. Pak. J Bot., 48, 1313–1317.

Razaq, A., Rajput, A.Q. and Shahzad, S. (2019) New records of Russula species from Pakistan. Pak J. Bot., 51, 255–258.

Sarwar, S. and Khalid, A.N. (2013) A Preliminary checklist of the Boletales in Pakistan. Mycotax., 121, 500.

Sutton, B.C. and Abbas, S.Q. (1986) Aphanoflax irregularis sp. Nov., from Pakistan. Trans. Brit. Mycol Soc., 87, 640–642.

Sultana, K. and Qureshi, R.A. (2007) Check list of Basidiomycetes (Aphyllo. and Phragmo.) of Kaghan Valley-11. Pak J. Bot., 39, 2629–2649.

Sultana, K., Bhatti, M.I., Akram, A., Irshad, G., Mastoi, M.I., Jiskani, M. (2015) Check list of mushrooms Asco. and Gasteromycetes of Kaghan Valley III. Sci. Int. (Lahore)., 27, 6199-6205.

Tariq, M., Dawar, S. and Mehdi, F.S. (2006) Occurrence of fungi on mangrove plants. Pak J. Bot., 38, 1293.

Hussain, S. (2016) Species diversity of Basidiomycetes of district Malakand. PhD. thesis. Department of Botany Hazara University Mansehra.