A study of the mushrooms of boletes by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy

In this paper, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) was used to study the fruiting bodies of six species of wild growing edible mushrooms belonging to Boletes of Basidiomycetes. The results show that each mushroom has its characteristic infrared spectrum, in which the major peaks are attributed to proteins and polysaccharides. The spectra indicate that both alpha-glucans and beta-glucans exist in the polysaccharides of mushrooms. According to the differences of their characteristic spectra peaks and absorbance ratios, the different species of Boletes can be identified. The region between 750 and 1200 cm(-1) could serve as fingerprints to discriminate mushrooms. A new identification method of mushrooms may be based on the characteristic vibrational spectra and chemical information provided by FTIR.