Timber Degrading Fungi in Sawmills of Gujarat, India Praveen Kumar Nagadesi 1, *, Arun Arya 2, ** 1 Department of Botany, P.G. section, Andhra Loyola College, Vijayawada - 520008, Andhra Pradesh, India 2 Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara - 390002, Gujarat, India * , **E-mail adress: nagadesipraveenkumar@yahoo.com, aryaarunarya@rediffmail.com ABSTRACT Timer decay is caused by primarily enzymatic activities of microorganisms. For the first time fungal diversity of timber degrading fungi was studied in Gujarat, India. Timber Degrading Fungi belonging to Aphyllophorales are economically important as many of these cause serious damage in sawmills of Gujarat. To find out the association of the timber degrading fungi and timber decay problems in sawmills a survey was conducted during 2007 to 2011 in different sawmills of 5 districts of Gujarat i.e. Vadodara, Ahmedabad, Bharuch, Rajkot and Jamnagar. In the present study teak wood present in sawmills was infected with 14 types of fungi in which Lenzites sterioides and Trametes versicolor damaged the wood severely was reported for the first time. In all 94 sawmills were surveyed, the 28 sawmills were from Vadodara, 29 from Ahmedabad, 12 from Bharuch, 21 from Rajkot and 4 from Jamnagar. Out of 94 sawmills survyed, 84 sawmills were having timber rotting fungi associated with wood. Maximum fifteen and thirteen fungal species were observed in saw mills of Chhani road, followed by 11 in Station road, 7 in Dhabhoi road and 6 in Harni, Vadodara. Fours woods uninfected are Beyo, Marinty, Ash, and Arjun. Fourteen different types of fungi were found associated with teak, followed by seven in pinus, madhuca, Acacia nilotica, six in babul, neem, four in tamarind, Pithacoelobium and three in mango, Eucalyptus, African Mahagoni, Kapoor, Peltophoram rouxburghii, Derris pinnata wood respectively. The commonly observed timber decaying fungi were Schizophyllum commune, Flavodon flavus and Ganoderma lucidum belonging to Basidiomycota. Ascomycota members included was Daldinia concentrica and Xylaria polymorpha. Keywords: Wood decay fungi; sawmills; Teak, Beyo; Marinty; Schizophyllum commune; Flavodon flavus; Daldinia concentric; Gujarat 1. INTRODUCTION The total forest cover in India according to the latest State of Forest Report 2003 is 67.83 m ha and this constitutes 20.64 % of the geographic area. The state of Gujarat is one of the progressive states in the western part of India with an area of 196,024 sq. km. While the recorded forest area is 19,393 sq.km, which is 9.89 % of the total geographical area. The International Letters of Natural Sciences Online: 2013-12-17 ISSN: 2300-9675, Vol. 7, pp 13-22 doi:10.18052/www.scipress.com/ILNS.7.13 2014 SciPress Ltd, Switzerland SciPress applies the CC-BY 4.0 license to works we publish: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/