Truffle-growing research
The magic behind rich, earthy truffles lies in the relationship between a tree’s roots and the fungi tuber melanosporum, commonly known as the black truffle.
Tree roots provide a home and nutrients for truffle spores, while truffles provide nutrients for the tree. But, unlike other edible fungi such as portobello or porcini mushrooms, the fruit of the truffle spores remains below the soil.
“We can’t grow it in culture in the lab, like you can button mushrooms,” said Inga Meadows, a plant pathologist with North Carolina State University. “It makes it hard to know what’s going on underneath that soil.”
Today, research continues on best practices in American truffle growing. Projects spearheaded by the truffle growers association and universities are done in tandem with the growers themselves.
Studies show black truffles have detailed mating types which help American researchers know how truffles produce and how they can help local farmers grow their more truffles more quickly.
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“There is a demand for this type of truffle, and we need to be able to get it so that it is something that is replicable,” said Pat Martin, who helped start Virginia Truffles with her husband. “It’s a finicky truffle, it’s not easy to cultivate, and we need to try and streamline it and understand how the inner workings go to make it come up faster than in the past.”
An hour and a half drive west of Washington, D.C., the family-run truffle farm is using the latest research on American truffle cultivation and farming in hopes of improving its crop.
They planted their first trees in 2008, harvested the first truffles in 2018 and, Martin said, are still experimenting with growing techniques. For example, planting different trees than hazelnuts, a tree known to produce truffles.
Martin said they are experimenting with varieties of trees because a fungal disease, the eastern filbert blight, “knocked out a lot of hazelnut trees,” she said. “We thought we better diversify our host species.”
Martin said one major barrier for most potential truffle growers is the time it takes to cultivate the crop. When you say “it’s going to be eight years before they have a salable crop, everybody goes, well, no, we’re not interested, she said. ”
More recently, researchers from two major universities, alongside citizen scientists and truffle dogs, identified two new truffle species native to North America.
When Townsend first planted her own tree on her farm in Kentucky, she said she had to learn some “tough lessons along the way.” One was finding out that “conventional wisdom” of using herbicide to eliminate every weed and plant among the trees for 7 years to avoid vegetative competition, left her orchard looking like “scorched earth.”
“We just stepped back and said, gosh, you know, this cannot be right to the extent that we were taught,” she said. “I eliminated all herbicides in my orchard. And as soon as I did that, my soil is better, and the worms are back.”
Townsend said common wisdom among truffle growers producing the European-native black truffles used to be to exterminate any other variety of truffles. Now, those same growers across the U.S. are looking more closely at what truffles grow in their home soil.
“We have indigenous truffles all over the United States,” she said.
Meadows said with how difficult it can be to replicate European growing conditions for high value truffles, it might be a good idea for more growers to start looking to sell native truffles.
“Maybe we find out that the black [truffle] isn’t great for eastern North America and maybe we can’t unlock the code to get it to produce commercially,” she said. “So how do we increase the market for our native truffles?”
Researchers said knowing more about native truffles could be the next frontier.
Martin, in Virginia, is still focused on her prized black truffles and selling them to people who come to tour the farm, local chefs and online buyers. But, she’s already looking ahead to see what’s next.
“We now know better than ever that we have some native truffles here that have culinary value,” she said. “The demand is there and the cuisine has changed.”
Townsend said she hopes her generation of truffle growers can help the next generation.
“The orchards coming on board now, I am very encouraged that we’ve transferred enough information that those orchards may really get up to significant production quantities,” she said.
Educating truffle consumers
Truffles are expensive, retailing between $800 and $1,000 per pound, but you might see truffle oil, truffle salt or truffle-flavored potato chips in the grocery store for a fraction of that price. That’s because the flavor can be mimicked by artificial flavors.
In fact, growers like Townsend believe the “competition is artificial flavors.”
“Truffles are ephemeral in their experience, they are as much aroma as they are flavor,” she said. “If it knocks you out of your chair, it’s not a real truffle.”
The North American Truffle Growers’ Association has about 200 members, including farmers, researchers and foragers. Townsend said the market for truffles is growing. That’s why they are working on ways to better educate American consumers about what they’re eating and what options they have if they’re looking for real truffles.
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