Recently, the research group led by Prof. HUANG Qing in the Institute of Technical Biology, Hefei Institutes of Physical Science demonstrated a useful technique of combining plasma mutagenesis and infrared spectroscopy for Ganoderma lingzhi mutation breeding and screening and application.

Ganoderma lingzhi contains polysaccharides which have many pharmacological functions. While people normally retrieve Ganoderma polysaccharides from the fruiting bodies which contain high content of cellulose, hemicellulose and other impurities, it is also important to obtain Ganoderma polysaccharides from mycelia by fermentation method with high quality.

For this purpose, in collaboration with biotech-companies, one of HUANG's research interests is to develop the methods to acquire the Ganoderma lingzhi strains with high content of Ganoderma polysaccharides.

In this work, HUANG's group applied atmospheric-pressure low-temperature plasma (LTP) to treat the protoplasts of Ganoderma lingzhi and so they obtained a large number of mutant strains.

In order to select the high-polysaccharide-production strains, they applied near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy to inspect the stains based on the previously constructed quantitative model of Ganoderma polysaccharide.

As a result, the mutagenic strains with high content of Ganoderma polysaccharides were identified, and confirmed by the enzymology and electron microscopy examinations.

In general, this work shows the technical advance of combined application of LTP and NIR techniques in the mutation breeding of edible and medicinal fungi such as Ganoderma lingzhi.

The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Strategic Pioneer Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

A. The schematic diagram of the home-made low temperature plasma mutagenesis device; B. RAPD verification of the mutant strains; C. SEM of the mycelium of the mutant Ganoderma lingzhi strains; D. Prediction of the polysaccharide content of the mutant Ganoderma lingzhi strain by NIR spectroscopy quantitative model; F. NIR spectra and characteristic bands of polysaccharides in Ganoderma lingzhi strains (Image by MA Yuhan)