Truffles
Did you know that truffles are a hypogeous fungi or mushroom which live underground in symbiosis with the plant host roots so that they can accomplish their life cycle. The plant host roots provides the sugars and vitamins need for growth. Some species, such as Tuber magnatum Pico, the ‘white truffle’, and Tuber melanosporum Vittad., the ‘black truffle’, are highly prized in many countries because of their special unique taste and smell. This is due to the spores which when ripe emits a very intense aroma indicating it is ready for picking.
Due to the huge demand and short supply of the black and white truffles, there has been increased attention towards other species of local interest for the rural economy such as Tuber aestivum. As such, new scientific projects have been initiated started to gain a better understanding of the ecology of truffles. This will involve gaining a better understanding of the truffle and exploiting new approaches of environmental microbiology and molecular ecology so that truffles may one day be farmed to yield higher productivity leading to greater supply. In some of these projects specific primers have been developed to identify many morphologically similar species, the distribution of Tuber magnatum has been followed in a selected truffle-ground, the phylogeography of Tuber melanosporum and Tuber magnatum has been traced, and the microorganisms associated with the truffles and their habitats have been identified.
Source: Mello A et al …
FEMS Microbiol Lett. 2006 Jul;260(1):1-8.
Istituto per la Protezione delle Piante del CNR, Sezione di Torino,
Torino, Italy.
