Fungi of Pakistan

The present Monograph dealt with 1219 species of Fungi recorded from the area now comprising the Province of Pakistan. Up to 1947 this area was a part of the British India and its mycoflora was listed by Butler & Bisby (1931) and Mundkur (1938). These Monographs recorded no more than 198 species from this region; an unusually low record for so vast an area (over 300,000 sq. miles).

Most of the 1,000 records added from 1938 to 1956 were by the author himself, Dr Sultan Ahmad. He felt convinced that he was only able to list a very small fraction of the entire mycoflora of this region.

The Divisions of Kalat, Hyderabad, Khairpur, Quetta and Dera Ismail Khan had either remained totally unexplored, or only a few sporadic records had been made from there. All that was needed was a brilliant Pioneer and he would find hundreds if not thousands of species of Fungi previously never recorded.

Until such a time that an extensive and expansive effort to discover the thousands of unrecorded species of Fungi in West Pakistan. Dr Sultan Ahmad felt it paramount that he presented his list of only 1219 species.

Butler & Bisby and Mundkur listed no more than 3000 species of Fungi from the whole of British India and Burma covering an area five times as large again as West Pakistan.

It had remained Dr Sultan Ahmad's fervent hope that that this Monograph and his other publications would serve to stimulate further research on systematic Mycology.

15th July,

Dr Sultan Ahmad Ph.D. D.Sc (1910-1983)

-Former Professor and Head of the Department of Botany, Government College Lahore
-Professor Emeritus, The University of the Punjab
-Awarded the Tamgha-i-Quaid-e-Azam by the government of Pakistan.
-Fellow of the Pakistan Academy of Sciences