From the Centro de Investigación y Tecnología Agroalimentaria del Gobierno de Aragón (CITA), has been just published a technical sheet about the main pest for the spanish truffle growers: the Leiodes beetle. You can download the document (just in spanish) in the following link:
This beetle has been tried to manage with pheromones traps massively, but damage on truffles is still so high. the pest is related to highly productive orchards and note in the last years with irrigation, most orchards have homogeneous crops, so the beetle population does not decrease.
Adult Leiodes feed from truffles and fly over the orchards looking for new truffles buried in the soil, thus dispersing spores and probably helping as well to spread sexes and truffle fertilization.
BTW, there´s a whole chapter about these truffle pests in our latest book “Truffle Farming Today”, and the chapter is available to download for free in this link:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/289508716_Truffles_Flies_and_Beatles_-_Suillia_and_Leiodes
Cheers,
Marcos S. Morcillo
trufflefarming 