Basidiomycetes

• Includes mushrooms, bracket fungi or puffballs.
• They grow in soil, on logs and tree stumps and in living vegetative reproduction by fragmentation is common.
• The sex organs are absent, but plasmogamy is brought about by fusion of two vegetative or somatic cells of different strains or genotypes.
• The resultant structure is dikaryotic which ultimately gives rise to basidium.
• Karyogamy and meiosis take place in the basidium producing four basidiospores.
• The basidiospores are exogenously produced on the basidium.
• The basidia are arranged in fruiting bodies called basidiocarps.
• E.g. Agaricus (mushroom), Ustilago (smut) and Puccinia (rust fungus).