Last week I had a chance to give lectures on cultivation of truffles and other edible mycorrhizal fungi, of which I left copies in our slideshare account:
http://www.slideshare.net/micofora
They asked me to speak of the value chain of the truffle, and try to break down what’s planted so far worldwide and estimated productions in the medium term, that now you can see in the attached presentation in the upper part of this post.
There is a chance that in a few years, maybe only 5 or 6 more seasons, if everything planted began producing an average of only 30kgs/ha, it would reach 1000 tons! Considering that a large part of what is planted are old truffieres, or not very good quality (lots of orchards planted for grants with no quality controls of the seedlings) or poor handling without irrigation, and with the permission of the west aussies, maybe these productions could drop at 15kgs/ha in average, then we would reach the threshold of 1000 tons of black truffles about year 2030.
Just a reference: the average of recent years production of truffles in Europe is 59Tons. Although this past season was very good and only Spain produced over 40Tons, 37 of which came from the Teruel area, and of these, 10-20% were from truffle plantations.
Considering that the average price for black truffle at a harvester, for the past 10 years in Catalonia, was 425 € / kg (this means all qualities mixed and not cleaned truffles). As I have said on other posts, we must be prepared for a price lower, but stable from one year to another.
Cheers,
Marcos S. Morcillo
trufflefarming 