Photo credit: Nisa Un Surat - Department of Plant Sciences, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan.

Morchella eximia Boud. sect. Distantes (Elata clade) is a member of the Ascomycota that fruits prolifically in post-fire settings (Franck et al., 2015).  It is common throughout much of the Northern Hemisphere and has also been found in Australia.  Like other Morchella species it produces high-value, edible mushrooms, but unlike most species in the genus it has been successfully cultivated outdoors (Liu et al. 2018). However, the reliability of cultivated fruiting is in need of improvement (Liu et al. 2018).  Prior to the mushroom stage it can produce a conidial stage on the soil surface, and it produces sclerotia below ground. The ability to fruit under agricultural settings demonstrates that it can complete its life cycle growing saprophytically, but in nature it can also be root associated. The completed genome now provides a tool to further dissect its life history and its behavior in post fire environments, and it will likely aid in its further development as an agriculturally viable crop.