Mushrooms are becoming relevant foods due to their nutritional, gastronomic and
pharmacological properties, namely antioxidant, antitumor and antimicrobial properties.
However, despite several mushroom species have been chemically characterized, the
evaluation of triacylglycerol (TAG) profile remained nearly discarded. Since TAG was
formerly used to assess the authentication of highly valued commercial oils, and the
distribution of fatty acids on the glycerol molecule is genetically controlled, the potential of
TAG profile to act as taxonomical marker was evaluated in 30 wild mushroom species.
Principal component analysis and linear discriminant analysis were used to verify the
taxonomical rank (order, family, genus or species) more related with the detected TAG
profile. The results pointed out that the ability of TAG profile to discriminate mushroom
samples increased for the lower taxonomical ranks, reaching a maximal performance for
species discrimination. Since there is high resemblance among mushroom species belonging
to the same genus and considering that conservation techniques applied to mushrooms often
change their physical properties, this might be considered as a valuable outcome with
important practical applications.
