An Overview of Wild Edible Fungi Resource Conservation and Its Utilization in Yunnan

As one of the province with the most abundant bio-diversity in China, Yunnan is also one of the most-concerned region in the world which is famous for its bio-diversity. The wild edible fungi resources in Yunnan are extremely rich and diverse, which account for nearly 40.7% of the world’s known resources and 90% of China’s known resource respectively. Serving as one important type of forest understory resource and product, the wild edible fungi has a large market due to its unique flavor, texture or special health care function. Therefore, sustainable utilization of the wild edible fungi resource is of paramount importance to develop the rural livelihood and furthermore conserve forest and animal resources in Yunnan. Integrating a large number of previous researches, this paper has summarized the current situations of edible fungi resources as well as the existing problems on production, food, medicine utilization, processing, trade and resource conservation inYunnan. Data showed that the wild edible fungi resources are playing extremely important roles on the peasant household incomes in the vast mountainous areas in Yunnan. For example, the fungi collection incomes can account for 50% to 80% of the household income in Xishuangbanna. However, the wild edible fungi resources are facing the problems of the reductions in resource types and quantities, unclear ownership, improper collection and conservation measures, unscientific management as well as other outstanding issues. The author point out that it is quite essential to clear the ownership, implement the community-based conservation strategies as well as to strengthen the researches on the scientific collection, conservation and breeding technologies in order to solve the problems in the effective conservation and sustainable utilization of the wild edible fungi resources in the future.