Do fungi hybridise?

[Mangetout]

Any mycologists out there (my knowledge of mycology is strictly culinary), although I seem to reall that, although fungi reproduce by spores(which looks like asexual reproduction), it is necessary for two different sets of hyphae to meet in order to give rise to the fruiting body.

Are there such things as hybrid fungi?

[MEBuckner]

From a web page about roots:

T-22 is the common name for Trichoderma harzianum, strain T-22, a hybrid fungus developed in a micro-biological breeding program at Cor-nell.

And from a news item on a Central European environmentalist web site:

A new hybrid fungus that has already killed several hundred-thousand alder trees along the rivers of Western Europe appears to be steadily marching east and will probably enter Central and Eastern Europe soon, according to an Aug. 26 report from the Hungarian daily “Nepszabadsag.” Scientists were surprised to discover that the hybrid species contains DNA elements of two different fungi species, because fungi almost never cross-fertilise in nature, the paper said.

So I guess they can, but usually don’t, unless those Mad Scientists at Cornell get ahold of them.