Six fruit body derived lines (pfle FB) generated from six fruiting pfle somatic hybrid mushroom lines showed genetic diversity analysed by fruit body morphology and inter simple sequence repeat (ISSR) markers. Stipe length, pelius diameter and bioefficiency % (BE%) of all the strains showed variations between each other with respect to Pleurotus florida parent. Hybrid pfle 1v and pfle 1q showed the highest value of stipe length and pelius diameter, respectively, compared with parent P. florida. Four ISSR primers amplified a total of 47 reproducible fragments with 82.9% polymorphism in which primer ISSR-03 produced the highest number of amplicons. Unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean (UPGMA) based dendrogram exhibited two major groups in which hybrids pfle 1r and pfle 1q showed genetical closeness to parents P. florida and Lentinula edodes, respectively. Tissue culture generated line from fruit body of pfle 1r hybrid showed maximum BE% compared with the other hybrids and P. florida parent. For identification of this line, a pair of hybrid strain-specific SCAR marker (RFB2F and RFB2R) was developed based on an unique 813 bp RAPD amplicon.
