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Truffles!

MrRING

MrRING

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I have heard that it is impossible to grow real truffles in a harvestable way - is this true?

It seems like here at the truffle faq site:

http://members.tripod.com/~BayGourmet/trufflebas.html

that it is probably never going to happen:

Attempts are being made to farm truffles due to the difficulty in finding them in the wild. The harvest has steadily decreased for the last 90 years, due to forest destruction and the killing of trees by air pollution. France produced 1,000 metric tonnes of truffles in 1892; now, only 50-90 tonnes are harvested each year.

maybe because of Truffle-producing fungi have also formed symbioses with trees (mycorrhizae) because fungi cannot make their own food. The hyphae, or thread-like non-fruiting part of these fungi, coat the roots of the tree and help their host absorb soil minerals. In return, the tree host provides the fungus with carbohydrates and other nutrients, the product of the tree's photosynthesis.

which sounds like it would be difficult to reproduce.

BUT - is it possible that people who are already entrenched in the truffle market would say that anything other than a natural truffle is impossible, but that in actuality it has been done in controlled conditions?
 
I've heard ceps (porcini) can't be farmed either, probably any fungus that is sybiotic to living trees (as opposed to dead wood or other plant matter) would be the same.
 
Mycorrhizal fungi - ones that form a symbiotic relationship with plants - cannot be grown in captivity unlike normal shop bought mushrooms which are saprophitic.

Truffles have been grown in controlled conditions however - trees have been seeded and artificially innoculated with truffle mycelia and under certain conditions these innoculated trees can then grow and under ideal circumstances some of them will produce truffles. This is the best we have managed so far - so basically you can produce an orchard which some of the trees will produce truffles and this is after a minimum of 10 years.

Gordon
 
Homo Aves said:
and then you need a pig (muzzled) to find them!
Click to expand...

Or a dog! Dogs are easier to pull away from the truffles than pigs
On a serious note - pigs are traditionally used in France and dogs in Italy

Gordon
 
a dimly remebered Local news item had someone producing trees and trufle spore inpreganted roots in Somerset i think.. they had big polly tunnels full of 2ft high beech trees in plastic tube pots... i think they were exporting them to france.
 
Truffles surprise for gardener

A culinary delight, normally associated with France or Italy, has been discovered in a Devon garden.

Ten truffles - the fungal equivalent of caviar - were unearthed by tree surgeon and gardener Chris Hunt in a garden in Plymouth.

The sought-after delicacies are thought to be worth about £1,000.

The 47-year-old gardener dug up the truffles when working in the garden of Elaine Keith-Hill, who is now considering selling them.

"I was amazed when Chris found them," she told BBC News.

"I thought 'what am I doing with truffles in my garden' and gradually throughout the day he kept finding more and more."

Mr Hunt was clearing undergrowth around beech trees at Mrs Keith-Hill's property when he unearthed around two kilos of the aromatic fungus.

He said when he uncovered the first truffle, he recognised it immediately.

"But I've never found anything like this in 10 years of digging up people's gardens," Mr Hunt said.

The garden where the truffles were found is filled with mature oak and beech trees about 150 years old.

Truffles are traditionally gathered between November and May, using specially-trained dogs or boars who locate the fungi by smell.

They grow around tree roots - normally oak - by providing and taking vital nutrients from the roots.

Strong flavour

The black truffle from Perigord in France and the white truffle from Piedmont in Italy are considered by many to be the best in the world.

They are both mainly harvested in late autumn and winter. Once discovered, truffles can often be collected in subsequent years at the same location.

Truffles and truffle oil have strong flavours and aromas.

For that reason chefs use bland foods, such as pasta, rice and potatoes to complement the truffle flavour.

They are also often used in conjunction with fatty foods like foie gras, butter, cheese, cream, and oils.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/7545726.stm

Global warming? Aliens? 8)
 
Ten truffles - the fungal equivalent of caviar - were unearthed by tree surgeon and gardener Chris Hunt in a garden in Plymouth.
Click to expand...

maybe it's because i'm not awake yet, but i misread that the first time as the fungal equivalent of caviar being unearthed by a tree sturgeon...
 
Perth pupils find mystery truffles in school garden

Pupils harvesting vegetables from a school garden have dug up a "mystery" truffle, which experts are struggling to identify.

The children at Moncreiffe Primary School in Perth discovered what was initially thought to be a Scottish summer truffle.

But wild food expert Andrew Fraser said it was not a variety he had ever seen before in Scotland.

If edible, the truffle could be worth hundreds of pounds per kg.

Mr Fraser told BBC Scotland it was potentially a very exciting find.

"They are truffles - we just don't know what sort they are," he said.
"They're not Scottish summer truffles. I need to get another expert to look at them. They're a whitey-brown colour - but white truffles have never been found in the UK before."

The school started the vegetable patch as part of a project to help pupils understand where food comes from.

A kitchen is also planned to teach children how to create meals from scratch.

Moncreiffe Primary School head teacher Karen Young, said: "Children from one of the school gardening groups were harvesting their potatoes, onions and beans, when they dug up something they didn't recognise.

"The teacher who leads the gardening group, Jane Savage, had an inkling it might be something rather special and contacted one of the school's business partners, local well-known chef Graeme Pallister.
"He confirmed that the children had indeed found what looked like a truffle."

Mrs Young added that the pupils and staff were amazed at the discovery.

And Mr Pallister said he was "jumping" with excitement when he heard about the find.

"There's nothing else really like them. There's no flavour to truffles - they just perfume the food," he said.
"It's the aroma around them which drives the senses, which gives a flavour. They're very, very unique and very sought after."

Mr Pallister, chef and patron of Perth's 63 Tay Street restaurant, said given the chance he would cook the truffles with a simple butter pasta.

He said he believed it was the first time truffles had been found in Perthshire.

The pupils found about 250g of truffles, but the chef believes there could be more in the garden.

Black truffles are not as prized as the white variety, which can sell for up to £2,700 per kg, but only the black ones are found in Scotland.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-t ... l-11453603
 
I can say it's not the first time truffles have been found in Perthsire.

And with regards to what species it is - it is currently estimated that we may only know 10% of the fungal species in existence and things like hypogeous fungi are going to be horribly under recorded in every aspect of them you care to think about.

Gordon
 
Giorgio, can you help one’s truffles grow: Philip’s fungi crop fails again so he calls in Italian experts
By Nick Pisa
Last updated at 1:55 AM on 3rd October 2010

Prince Philip has called in experts from Italy to help him establish a truffle plantation at Sandringham.
The Duke of Edinburgh has been desperate to set up a one-acre ‘truffiere’ since 2007. He even spent £5,000 on special truffle-impregnated trees but they failed to produce.
Now specialists Giorgio Remedia and Gianluigi Gregori from Acqualagna in central Italy have been called in.
They will fly in to carry out an investigation on the soil at Sandringham on Thursday and advise Prince Philip on the best way to produce the sought-after fungi.

With them will be Acqualagna’s mayor, Andrea Pierotti, who said: ‘The Duke has long had a desire to create his own truffle orchard and hopefully we will help him achieve this.
'We are flying in to offer our expert help and we will also give him some local white truffles which are our speciality and advise him on how he can grow his own.’

Prince Philip is keen to cultivate black truffles – nicknamed ‘black diamonds’ and costing as much as £900 a kilo – as they are easier to produce than white ones.
They grow round the roots of beech, oak and hazel trees and favour alkaline soil, of which there is an abundance at Sandringham.

Three years ago the Duke planted more than 300 £15 hazel and oak saplings impregnated with the Tuber melanosporum spores in the Royal Fruit Farm, where he commercially cultivates apples, gooseberries and blackcurrants.
The idea was to grow truffles that could be used in the Royal kitchens or sold through the farm shop for profits to be ploughed back into the estate.

Acqualagna is famous for its black and white truffles. Mayor Pierotti said: ‘We heard the Prince was very frustrated at the fact his crop was not producing fruit and he was having trouble growing truffles.
‘We offered to give him a hand and he gladly accepted. We will take soil samples from the estate and examine them and hope to give an interim report there and then.
‘The samples will then be taken back to Italy where they will be analysed in a laboratory and we will then send a fuller report in a few weeks’ time. We are very experienced when it comes to truffles and we hope to be of help.
‘We will also take samples from the tree saplings just to make sure they were of a good quality – it’s unlikely but the Prince may have been the victim of a fraud and the spores not up to standard.
'I’m not as experienced as the two experts who will advise Prince Philip but my initial reaction would be that the climate in Norfolk is perhaps not best suited for truffle growing.’

The area around Acqualagna produces about two-thirds of Italy’s truffles – on average between 60 and 80 tons a year, which are worth more than £50??million.
The mayor revealed that the area supplied truffles to US President Barack Obama’s favourite Italian restaurant in Chicago for one of his preferred pasta dishes.

The saplings planted by Prince Philip on Sandringham came from Truffle UK Limited. Last night it was unavailable for comment.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z11HoLwgSY
 
If the trees planted were saplings and it was only done three years ago they're too young.
According to Ian Hall who came up with this system of producing truffles in Europe the earliest they will start after being planted is four years and it can be as much as ten years.
Anyone know Prince Phillip's email address?

Gordon
 
BlackRiverFalls said:
Ten truffles - the fungal equivalent of caviar - were unearthed by tree surgeon and gardener Chris Hunt in a garden in Plymouth.
Click to expand...

maybe it's because i'm not awake yet, but i misread that the first time as the fungal equivalent of caviar being unearthed by a tree sturgeon...
Click to expand...

I love it! :D
 
Revival in truffle-hunting in England
Truffle-hunters are sniffing out the prized delicacies in woodlands across England.
By Sam Marsden
10:00PM BST 11 Oct 2012

For many years those in the know have kept quiet about discoveries of a hugely valuable treasure found buried across the country.
But now the secret is out: truffles are thriving in English woodlands and some lucky countryside-dwellers are making a modest fortune by selling the “black diamonds” to top restaurants.

One British farmer has discovered what could be the biggest truffle find in Europe on a 10-acre site on his land in Wiltshire.
The farmer, who did not want to be named for fear of triggering an invasion of truffle-hunters, harvests up to 220lb of the delicacies every year without even needing to use a specially-trained dog to sniff them out. By contrast the typical annual harvest from a single site in truffle-mad Italy is around 45lb.
The Wiltshire farmer has sold his truffles to more than 100 restaurants at a price of about £150 a kilo (2.2lb). :D

He described how he created the perfect environment for truffles by accident when he started planting new woods in 1990 for firewood and as a windbreak under a Government forestry scheme.
“I had no idea what a truffle was then. But 15 years later we found, strewn across the path, these black things a badger had dug up,” he told Country Life magazine.

Experts said England has always had large numbers of truffles, which grow best in south-facing woodland with a chalky soil and lots of sunlight, but for many decades they have not been harvested.
The lucrative fungi have been found across the country, from Brixham in Devon to as far north as Darlington in County Durham.

Modern farming methods resulted in the destruction of some of the natural habitat where truffles thrived, but recent moves to replant hedgerows and woodland are reversing this trend.
Tom Lywood, who hunts for truffles with Italian Lagotto dogs, said: “Truffles and conservation can, and should, go hand in hand.”

There is also promising evidence that it is possible to impregnate trees with truffle spores, raising the prospect of artificially helping to boost the country’s harvests.
Truffles were found just before Christmas last year in a recently-planted oak and hazel woodland in southern England that had been inoculated with seedlings supplied by Dorset-based Truffle UK.
Nigel Hadden-Paton, of Truffle UK, said: “All we can guarantee is that the seedlings are inoculated – what we can’t guarantee is that they’re going to produce. For that, we have to place our trust in the hands of the good Lord.”

There is even an upside to Britain’s miserable summer for truffle fans. The recent wet weather has raised hopes of a bumper crop this year.
Worldwide production of black truffles has plummeted over the past century from 1,000 to 2,000 tons in 1900 to about 150 tons now.

Pigs were traditionally used to root out truffles, but hunters now tend to prefer dogs, which have the advantage of being less likely to eat a valuable find. 8)

Even more valuable are white truffles, which cannot be grown in England. They are mainly found in Istria in Croatia and Alba in Italy, and can be sold for as much as £3,000 a kilo.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink ... gland.html

Nice to know the crap weather is good for something!
 
rynner2 said:
Revival in truffle-hunting in England
The lucrative fungi have been found across the country, from Brixham in Devon to as far north as Darlington in County Durham.

There is also promising evidence that it is possible to impregnate trees with truffle spores, raising the prospect of artificially helping to boost the country’s harvests.
Truffles were found just before Christmas last year in a recently-planted oak and hazel woodland in southern England that had been inoculated with seedlings supplied by Dorset-based Truffle UK.
Nigel Hadden-Paton, of Truffle UK, said: “All we can guarantee is that the seedlings are inoculated – what we can’t guarantee is that they’re going to produce. For that, we have to place our trust in the hands of the good Lord.”
Click to expand...

I know the article is about England but there are plenty of truffles found in Scotland as well.

And "promisng evidence etc..." erm such as the business Ian Hall has set up in New Zealand in the mid 1990's building on the success of the techniques in the 1970's. So that's promising evidence that has been around for approx 40 years. Try researching your articles Sam Marsden.
 
There's a piece in the book 'The Essential T.C. Lethbridge' (dry title) about the famous dowser using his skills to locate and unearth some rare British truffles.
 
BlackRiverFalls said:
Ten truffles - the fungal equivalent of caviar - were unearthed by tree surgeon and gardener Chris Hunt in a garden in Plymouth.
Click to expand...

maybe it's because i'm not awake yet, but i misread that the first time as the fungal equivalent of caviar being unearthed by a tree sturgeon...
Click to expand...

I read the title as "British Trifles", so you're not on your own there. :D
 
I'm not sure whether this story represents a one-off Fortean incident or the prelude to feasible urban truffle production.

Wild truffle grows on Paris rooftop, in scientific mystery
Urban scientists and Paris foodies are getting excited about a bizarre discovery atop a hotel near the Eiffel Tower: the first-ever wild truffle growing in the French capital.

It’s just one 25-gram (0.9-ounce) winter truffle. But truffles normally sprout only in limited areas of southern Europe, and are so rare that the most prized versions can sell for thousands of euros per kilogram.

The National Museum of National History, which confirmed the discovery Friday, called it a “beautiful example” of environmental benefits of rooftop gardens ...

Urban ecology researcher Frederic Madre described on France-Info television finding the mushroom beneath a hornbeam tree at the Mercure Paris Centre hotel.

This truffle was donated to science — but the hotel is already hoping to be able to offer homegrown truffles to diners someday.
Click to expand...

SOURCE: https://apnews.com/7e39e89cf7574b0f...grows-on-Paris-rooftop,-in-scientific-mystery

Original Article on Discovery (in French): http://www.mnhn.fr/fr/communiques-presse-dossiers-presse/decouverte-truffe-sauvage-toits-paris
 
There is a man in the UK who has found a way to cultivate truffles over here. IIRC, he appeared on Dragon's Den, looking for funding.
 
Mythopoeika said:
There is a man in the UK who has found a way to cultivate truffles over here. IIRC, he appeared on Dragon's Den, looking for funding.
Click to expand...

Yep ... There's a British Truffles thread dating back to 2008:
forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/british-truffles.34361/
UPDATE: That other thread has now been merged into this one.
 
Last edited:
Never tried truffles.

Worth it?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Bonobos dine well.

Mushroom-munching bonobos in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have introduced scientists to a new species of truffle.

Commonly used by Congolese communities to bait traps for small mammals, Hysterangium bonobo is also savored by bonobos, an endangered species of great ape. Scientists say the truffle hints at vast reserves of undescribed fungal diversity in the region.

"Truffles aren't just for gourmet chefs -- they're also for our closest relatives," said Matthew Smith, an associate professor in the University of Florida department of plant pathology and curator of the UF fungal herbarium. "There's so much to learn about this system, and we're just scratching the surface."

Edible mushrooms widely prized for their aromas, truffles are often ecosystem linchpins, and H. bonobo is no exception. Although it looks like a homely potato, it plays a key role in enabling trees to absorb nutrients from the soil and supports the diets of animals. Its irregularly shaped outer layer is also lined with microscopic crystal-encrusted filaments, possibly used for defense or aroma diffusion.

Although previous studies have reported bonobos eating truffles, this is the first such species identified. ...

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200922135731.htm
 
Truffle hunting can be a dangerous business.

At least 26 people searching for valuable truffles in the Syrian desert have been killed by the Islamic State group, state media and activists say.

Civilians and pro-government fighters were among the victims of the attack on Sunday in Hama province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

IS militants have repeatedly preyed on those searching for the fungus, with more than 150 people killed this year.

A kilogram (2.2lb) can fetch more than the country's average monthly wage.

Syria's state-run Sana news agency cited a police source as saying that IS militants attacked a group of civilians in the village of Duwaizin, in the eastern countryside of Hama, killing 26 of them.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based monitoring group that relies on a wide network of sources on the ground in Syria, put the death toll at 36 and said the victims included at least 17 fighters from the pro-government National Defence Forces.

Searching for the truffles is extremely dangerous as hunters contend with landmines and IS fighters maintain hideouts in the desert where they grow. But many who face poverty and unemployment exacerbated by Syria's war risk the dangers as the fungus can sell for up to US$25 (£20) per kg depending on size and grade in a country where the average monthly wage is around $18 (£14).

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-65295892
 
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