Objective   To promote the cold climate, specialty mushrooms in Guizhou, Volvariella brumalis as an ideal fill-in of the popular straw mushroom, V. volvacea, for wintertime market, the culturable endophytes and rhizosphere fungi associated with it were isolated and investigated to aid the cultivation.

  Methods  Specimens from the fruiting bodies and rhizosphere soil of V. brumalis in the wild were collected. Endophytes in the fruiting bodies were isolated, cultured, and identified by ITS sequencing using the traditional tissue separation method, and fungal community in the rhizosphere soil analyzed by high-throughput sequencing.

  Results   The 50 isolated endophytic strains were Volvopluteus, or the traditionally defined Volvariella, genera. They belonged to 3 phyla, 13 families, 16 genera (two of undefined families), and 20 species. Among them, Fusarium and Mucor were the dominant genera. The fungal Shannon-Wiener diversity index was 2.45, the Simpson index 0.88, the evenness index Pielou 0.88, and the Margalef richness index 3.83. In the rhizosphere soil, 67 919 sequences were detected with 276 kinds of fungi that belonged to 10 phyla, 131 families, and 213 genera. The dominant genera included Mortierella, Lophotricus, Pseudeurotium, Pseudaleuria, unclassified_o_Sordariales, and unclassified_c_Sordariomycetes. The Ace indices of 3 soil samples averaged 298.7, the Shannon indices 3.53, the Simpson indices 0.08, and the Chao indices 304.23.

  Conclusion   Both the culturable endophytes and the rhizosphere fungi of V. brumalis were relatively rich in diversity. The information obtained would facilitate further research on the isolation, cultivation, and pest control of the mushroom for potentially valuable marketing in winter.