What Are Fungi And Its Characteristics?

Umbrella shaped mushroom emerge in a large number on dung piles during rainy season. Fluffy mass of tangled threads like structures with black dots of molds are also seen on oranges and bread. These mushrooms and molds are called fungi. Fungi are simple heterotrophic eukaryotes. They cannot prepare their own food. They show absorptive mode of nutrition (i.e. absorb prepared food). Some fungi are parasitic. Parasitic fungi obtained their food from other living organisms (called the hosts).

Many of them cause diseases in many important crop plants and some attack animals and man. Saprotrophic fungi get their food from dead animals, plant, their wastes and decomposing materials. Saprotrophs secrete and pour out many digestive enzymes on the dead bodies which convert dead or waste organic materials into simpler substances that are absorbed by the fungus. Mushroom and bread mold Rhizopus are saprophytic fungi. Fungal cell wall contains chitin, which is a complex carbohydrate. Body of a fungus is generally composed of branched, tubular threads called hyphae. In the presence of moisture and at suitable temperature, fungi spread rapidly by means of spores; the reproductive structure that gives rise to new plant bodies. Fungi directly reproduce sexually as well as asexually