Consider the following statements:
- 1.Some mushrooms have medicinal properties.
- 2.Some mushrooms have psychoactive properties.
- 3.Some mushrooms have insecticidal properties.
- 4.Some mushrooms have bioluminescent properties.
How many of the above statements are correct?
Answer & explanation
Answer: (d) All four
Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of a very diverse group of fungi, and each property in the list is shown by at least some species: medicine (reishi, turkey tail), mind-altering chemicals (psilocybin), insect-deterring proteins and compounds, and a natural glow.
- ✓ 1. NCERT notes that wild edible mushrooms have high nutritional and medicinal values. Medicinal mushrooms such as reishi and turkey tail have been used against infections for centuries in Asia, and for over 30 years have been approved as an add-on to standard cancer treatment in Japan and China.
- ✓ 2. Psilocybin, a hallucinogen found in certain mushrooms ("magic mushrooms"), alters perception, mood and thought.
- ✓ 3. Some mushrooms are rarely attacked by insects; studies of their fruit bodies have found insecticidal proteins and antifeedant compounds that are being explored for pest control.
- ✓ 4. Several gilled mushrooms glow in the dark through a luciferin–luciferase reaction.
Remember · Fungi, including mushrooms, give medicines (reishi), psychoactive psilocybin, insecticidal proteins and bioluminescence (luciferin–luciferase light).
📘 Read it in NCERT: Class 9 Exploration, Ch 12 (practise this chapter)
Sources
- NCERT Class 9 · Exploration, Chapter 12 “Wild edible mushrooms are a valuable dietary food with high nutritional and medicinal values.”
- US National Cancer Institute, Medicinal Mushrooms (PDQ), Patient Version ↗ “Medicinal mushrooms are mushrooms that are used as medicine. They have been used to treat infection for hundreds of years, mostly in Asia. … For more than 30 years, medicinal mushrooms have been approved as an addition to standard cancer treatments in Japan and China.”
- US National Institute on Drug Abuse, Psilocybin (Magic Mushrooms) ↗ “Psilocybin is a chemical in certain types of mushrooms that grow on nearly every continent.”
- Berestetskiy & Hu (2021), The Chemical Ecology Approach to Reveal Fungal Metabolites for Arthropod Pest Management, Microorganisms (PMC) ↗ “Mushrooms were found to be promising producers of antifeedant compounds as well as insecticidal proteins.”
- Silva-Filho et al. (2023), Eoscyphella luciurceolata gen. and sp. nov., Journal of Fungi (PMC) ↗ “Some species of gilled mushroom are well known and stand out for their natural light emission with a luciferin/luciferase chemical reaction”
Question and answer: UPSC's official GS Paper I (2023, Series A) — paper ↗ · answer key ↗. Explanation: Minimalist IAS, checked 1 Oct 2026 (how we verify). ·