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Fungi questions in NEET usually give you one feature, such as septate mycelium, conidia or a dikaryon, and ask you to name the class or the example. If you learned the four classes as separate paragraphs, they blur together. This post sets them side by side, explains the sexual cycle that links them, works through a spore count, and ends with a routine.
Where is Kingdom Fungi in the syllabus?
The NEET (UG) 2026 syllabus asks for "salient features and classification of Monera; Protista and Fungi into major groups". The text is section 2.3 of NCERT Class 11 Biology, Chapter 2, Biological Classification, in the 2026-27 reprint. Check the syllabus for your exam year when NMC publishes it.
For the five-kingdom system as a whole, see our biological classification guide.
What makes a fungus a fungus?
From NCERT:
Heterotrophic. Most absorb soluble organic matter from dead substrates (saprophytes); others live on living hosts (parasites); some are symbionts, with algae as lichens or with roots as mycorrhiza.
Body. Except for unicellular yeasts, fungi are filamentous. The threads are hyphae and the network is the mycelium. Coenocytic hyphae are continuous tubes with many nuclei; others have cross walls called septae.
Cell wall. Made of chitin and polysaccharides.
Reproduction. Vegetative by fragmentation, fission and budding; asexual by conidia, sporangiospores or zoospores; sexual by oospores, ascospores and basidiospores.
The number of fungi still being discovered is large. A 2017 review estimated 2.2 to 3.8 million fungal species, with about 120,000 accepted so far, meaning only about 3% to 8% have been named so far.
How does the sexual cycle work?
NCERT gives three steps:
Plasmogamy: fusion of the protoplasm of two gametes, motile or non-motile.
Karyogamy: fusion of the two nuclei.
Meiosis in the zygote, giving haploid spores.
In some fungi, fusion of two haploid cells gives a diploid (2n) cell at once. In ascomycetes and basidiomycetes, there is a stage between plasmogamy and karyogamy where each cell holds two separate nuclei (n + n). NCERT calls this a dikaryon, and the phase the dikaryophase. Later the nuclei fuse and the cell becomes diploid.
How do the four classes compare?
Phycomycetes
Habitat: aquatic, decaying wood in damp places, or obligate parasites on plants.
Mycelium: aseptate and coenocytic.
Asexual spores: zoospores (motile) or aplanospores (non-motile), made endogenously in a sporangium.
Sexual: a zygospore from two gametes, which may be isogamous, anisogamous or oogamous.
Examples: Mucor, Rhizopus (bread mould), Albugo (parasite on mustard).
Ascomycetes (sac fungi)
Mostly multicellular (Penicillium), rarely unicellular (yeast, Saccharomyces).
Mycelium: branched and septate.
Asexual spores: conidia, made exogenously on conidiophores.
Sexual spores: ascospores, made endogenously in sac-like asci, grouped in fruiting bodies called ascocarps.
Examples: Aspergillus, Claviceps, Neurospora; morels and truffles are edible.
Basidiomycetes
Mushrooms, bracket fungi, puffballs; also parasites such as rusts and smuts.
Mycelium: branched and septate.
Asexual spores generally absent; fragmentation is common. Sex organs are absent: plasmogamy happens by fusion of two vegetative cells of different strains.
Karyogamy and meiosis in the basidium give four basidiospores, made exogenously. Basidia sit in basidiocarps.
Examples: Agaricus (mushroom), Ustilago (smut), Puccinia (rust).
Deuteromycetes (imperfect fungi)
Only asexual or vegetative phases are known; reproduce only by conidia.
Mycelium: septate and branched.
When a sexual stage is found, the fungus is moved, often to ascomycetes or basidiomycetes.
Examples: Alternaria, Colletotrichum, Trichoderma.
NCERT notes that Neurospora is used widely in biochemical and genetic work. One famous example is Beadle and Tatum's 1941 paper, Genetic Control of Biochemical Reactions in Neurospora.
Worked example: counting spores and nuclei
The numbers here are sample numbers for practice.
A mushroom gill holds 500 mature basidia. How many basidiospores form, and what is the ploidy at each step?
Before karyogamy, each basidium has a dikaryotic nucleus pair: n + n.
After karyogamy, one diploid nucleus: 2n.
Meiosis gives four haploid nuclei, so four basidiospores per basidium (NCERT).
Total spores: 500 × 4 = 2,000, each haploid (n).
A trap version gives you 2,000 basidiospores and asks how many meioses occurred. Each meiosis gives four spores, so 2,000 / 4 = 500 meioses.
Which mistakes cost marks?
Saying fungal walls are cellulose. NCERT says chitin and polysaccharides.
Putting Penicillium in phycomycetes. It is an ascomycete.
Calling conidia sexual spores. They are asexual, in ascomycetes and deuteromycetes.
Calling the dikaryon diploid. It is n + n.
Listing Trichoderma as a basidiomycete. NCERT places it in deuteromycetes.
Mixing endogenous and exogenous. Ascospores form inside asci; basidiospores and conidia form outside.
A practice routine for fungi
Day 1: draw a four-column comparison for the classes, using the rows mycelium, asexual spores, sexual spores and examples.
Day 2: write the three-step sexual cycle with ploidy at each step, adding the dikaryon.
Day 3: make ten one-feature questions ("septate, conidia, no known sexual stage") and name the class.
Day 4: link back to Trichoderma as a biocontrol agent in microbes in human welfare.
If plasmogamy and karyogamy still feel like two words for the same thing, the Fermi Concept Library covers every concept in physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics and computing, so you can read each idea on its own.
Tonight, fill in the four-column table from memory, then check every cell against NCERT.
