next scientific conference on Tuber aestivum/uncinatum

Preliminary Programme

6^th TAUESG Conference
26-28 August 2015

Hosted by the UK and organised by the Tuber aestivum/uncinatum European Scientists Group.

Programme

Venue: Norwich, University of East Anglia, at the Campus between Earlham Road and Bluebell Road, Norwich, England, United Kingdom for both accommodation and conference.

26^th August, Wednesday Trip to wild truffle sites in the East of England, Visit of Pingos and Norfolk plantations (includes Grosol’s research plantation)

27^th August, Thursday Conference day/poster session

28^th Friday Morning: Conference ½ day.

Afternoon: Will start with an update about the UK truffle market. It will be followed by contributors on Truffle Market structures in Europe and the economic fallout from developing an eco-tourism rural industry.

Saturday 29^th August: Norwich and Norfolk Food Festival: Inauguration of the Confrerie of Truffles of the British Isles, Truffle market, stands….in the town Centre for those who wish to attend (only at very early planning stage).

Conference fee :

27^th August-28^th August (includes 3 evening meals, 3nights B&B, one delegate cost for the whole conference, lunch abstracts and final publication for main authors only). The accommodation is in student rooms with single beds and includes a wet room. Costs: £305

Rooms with double beds: include also a wet room and hotel facilities (TV, tea and coffee in room) can be provided at the Broadview Lodge on the University campus. Please book your own accommodation if you need hotel facilities (the room sizes are the same): www.uea.ac.uk/…/visitor-accommodation/broadview–lodge

Truffle trip, East of England 26^th August

Will include one night B&B, meal the night before, lunch (packed lunch) and coach.
Costs: £105

The Confrerie of the British Isles inauguration

Friday night and Saturday programmes are not yet organised. This will be part of an event throughout Norwich which covers the whole of September as part of the Norwich and Norfolk food and drink festival. It is early for them at this point.

There may be a possibility of commercial stands in the town Centre. It will be possible to stay a further night at the university to attend. Extra night B&B min £34

Please send the registration form by 30^th April to French.marie@grosol.co.uk

See you there!

Marcos S. Morcillo

First Tuber borchii ever harvested in Australia!

Peter Stahle, the new president of the Australian Truffle Growers Association found by chance, while pulling steel stakes protecting the newer trees when a clod of earth adhered to the stake exposed the truffle. The stone pine is now 3 years old.

We believe Tuber borchii to be formed in late summer or early autumn, since shallow truffles are sometimes seen already in October and November (north hemisphere in mind). Most of them are immature when gathered, remaining whitish on the surface, although some already have a strong aroma. Although the gathering harvest season in Italy traditionally begins on 15 January and lasts until the end of April, mature truffles can be found as early as December. This one in Australia could tell us that the fruiting process could start earlier, at least down under. Location influences the maturing season: in coastal areas the truffles mature earlier and are collected between January and February; in mid-altitude areas they mature between February and March; and in higher altitude areas maturing is delayed until March or April.

Although bianchetto can grow in several soil types, sandy loam or loam sandy soils with excellent drainage could be better, as truffles will be bigger there. Cheers, Marcos S. Morcillo

pictures from the Barcelona Truffle Tour 2015

 

Two weeks ago we spent almost a week training on truffle farming a group of growers from overseas. Besides two days workshop at our research center, and visits to big and successful truffle farmers, we visited 3 different factories of truffle traders to see how truffles are processed and study the whole truffle value chain.

Special thanks to Dr. Xavier Parladé who gave us a lecture on the last molecular tools used on truffle farming and to Jordi Serentill, from Laumont truffle factory, one of the largest traders in Spain, who gave a 2 hours amazing lecture on truffle marketing that we all learnt a lot and understood why prices vary so much in the season. In Spain the truffle average production in the last 10 years has been around 10 tons, but last season we closed with over 60 tons and this season 2014-15 probably we will close with over 40 tons. So there is low appetite for buying more fresh truffle. Fresh market (restaurants)   reacts quite quickly to the lower prices and more restaurants start using truffles, but the industry who uses processed and canned truffles will react slower. This is one of the reasons why black truffle prices at origin were so low this season, specially at the beginning.

During the Barcelona Truffle Tour we enjoyed several truffle meals, but we will never forget the four and a half hour truffle tasting menu at Can Jubany Micheline start! Chef Nandu Jubany introduced as every dish and how was cooked. Brought us all the truffles they had at the fridge for that weekend and explain us why he was using wild of farmed truffles on each dish, or how they produced their own truffle oil, infusing the peelings of the truffles in sunflower oil, for one hour at 50 degrees. Definetely we will repeat next year! Thanks from here everyone who made it possible!

grafted stone pine and mycorrhized with Tuber borchii

grafted Pinus pinea

last week we talked about hazels grafted and mycorrhized with bianchetto, today I will show you another project we are working with.

Pinus pinea is a pine that takes about 15-16 years to produce pine cones. Their nuts are edible and with a great value in Mediterranean countries. Techniques to graft branches of mature stone pines and selected for their high yields of cones, have been developed in field and in nursery.

In the picture you can see a detail of the graft in a 5 year old stone pine. The following year cones start to be produced.

In this figure (apologize as I did not translated it but you will understand) we tried to show the yields and incomes from two different plantations. One mix of low density stone pine and cork oak (Quercus suber) all mycorrhized with Tuber borchii. And a second intensive plantation of 300 trees/ha with pure grafted Pinus pinea.

We do believe these kind of plantations could be a great opportunity in so may areas with  limy, neutral or sub-acidic soils in Mediterranean climate, not just in Spain and Portugal, but in other eastern countries like Bulgary from where I just landed yesterday.

Cheers,

Marcos S. Morcillo

New research on in vitro hazels mycorrhized with Tuber borchii

Following the research we are currently doing in Chile with hazels mycorrhized with Tuber borchii, that we published here:
http://www.slideshare.net/mobile/micofora/poster-morcillo-et-al-tuber-borchii-micorrhization-depending-on-host-tree-and-on-stage-of-inoculation

This week in Tarragona, Spain, we just planted 200 hazels that were produced in vitro from the amercian Dundee variety, a hazel that does not produce suckers. Later in nursery these hazels where grafted with a catalan hazel nut variety called “negret”, but one resistant to diseases developed at the IRTA research center, called N-9, that produces 30% higher yields. We mycorrhized these trees with Tuber borchii or bianchetto white truffle.

In these pictures you can still see the initial bag where in vitro hazels where grown and the graft with N9 strain.
We will be quantifying borchii mycelium in this plantation managed as an intensive nut orchard, with fertilizers, and another one as a control.
Hope next year to be able to post you the first results.

In Catalonia 20 years ago we had 40.000 hectares of hazel plantations, but nowadays just 11.000hes are left, although lots of them are in areas where T. melanosporum and T. brumale fruit naturally. In early 90´s, a kilo of hazel nuts was paid in catalonia at 3$,  but last year has been paid up to 14$/kg
Cheers,
Marcos S. Morcillo

Post harvest Truffle treatment with citric acid

I wrote in the past about some treatments to extend the life of truffles once harvested. By surface esterilization with alcohol and the use of gamma rays (https://trufflefarming.wordpress.com/2013/06/23/how-to-improve-post-harvest-conservation-of-fresh-truffles/).

A new research with Chinese truffle from 2014, propose a surface disinfection of truffles by a dip in citric acid at 3% and the antioxidant apple polyphenol at 3% for 20 minutes at 45 ° C. This could extend truffle fresh live to a month and a half!
They research as well the use of vacuum and controlled atmospheres in packaging.

However, there is a huge distance between these treatments and what happens with some truffle hunters or growers at origin in Spain, especially in seasons like the present, where prices of truffles are quite low. When they arrived at the market, do not want to sell their truffles and some prefer to take them back home and bring same truffles again the following week, of course with worse quality, to see if the price has raised a bit.
The trend should be reversed. Traders should pay different amounts depending on quality. Several truffle growers with good production, do not even wait for the truffle market every weekend, but have dealings with traders that collect truffles at their farms twice a week.

Cheers,

Marcos Morcillo

References:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1750-3841.12651/abstract

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308814606006534

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030881460701237X

How we analyze truffles for inoculum?

In Micologia Forestal & Aplicada we analize dozens of kilos of truffle fruitbodies to be used for inoculum and later delivered overseas on so many different countries where we have truffle projects or nurseries where truffle Mycorrhized trees are produced.
We have an agreement with truffle traders, so each week we can analize the level of maturity of several batches of truffles and those bellow quality tresholds are sent back to the provider same evening.
I uploaded here a video of how we checked this week 43 kilos of black truffles in our lab:

After microscope analysis, truffles are sonicated, surface disinfected and mostly freeze-dryed (liofilizated). DNA tests are usually done in order to get into some customs.

From mid january truffles strat to become ripe so we repeat this analysys each week until the end of the season.
We got a warm winter until the last 2 weeks, and just now truffles start to get their lovely aroma, until cold did not come, truffles could be dark gleba but with almost no aroma. Some research should be done in this topic as there are risks related to truffle orchards planted overseas in places where winters are not so cold (average temperature around 8-10 degrees Celsius) compared with our colder spanish winters.
Cheers,
Marcos S. Morcillo

Truffle farming in Chile

Before Christmas my teammates Xavi and Monica were in Chile coordinating the production of 20,000 Quercus ilex mycorrhized with black truffle in http://www.viverotrufas.cl facilities.
We organized as well a technical visit in the field open to a large group of truffle growers, on a plantation of black truffle just planted last year, in order to answer all technical questions of handling and managing their plantations in the early stages.

Results of our research project where we created the standard curve in which quantifies, throughout the year, the amount of truffle mycelium in the soil were presented for different ages of oak . In this project an exclusive program of monitoring and control of plantations through new molecular techniques for Real Time PCR allows us to quantify the truffle response to the different treatments in an orchard.

It is worth commenting that a few months ago, the Truffle Growers Association of Chile (ATChile) has its active site, which will have information of truffle cultivation in Chile and information for its members:
http://www.atchile.cl/

Regards,
Marcos Morcillo

Is lack of cold an issue for truffle quality?

Finally winter artived to Catalonia and with it the aroma of the black truffle.
The first 4 weeks of this season truffle quality was quite low, so do prices, but this week I finally could smell lovely truffles ripe enough.
Even Christmas was close, last weekend in Carpentras 550 kilos of truffles were sold between 250 à 500 €/kg, with an average price at origin to the trader at 320 €.

Truffle hunters say the lack of cold has been the clue. I don’t know. Maybe some growers form western Australia would not agree as in those areas winters are no too cold.
Anyway I’m happy as we got the first truffles from one of our orchards this week, and it weighted over 200grams! Note the substrate we add to the ground last year in a thin layer:

No as big as this one found today by a friend of mine 🙂

Enjoy Christmas holidays and Happy New Year!

BTW, for those of you willing to join our Barcelona Truffle Tour next february, keep in mind that dateline is 15th january.
Cheers,

Marcos S. Morcillo

new potential map where to grow truffles in Australia

truffle farming map for Australia

When I was doing the review for the new book on truffle farming we were writing, I could not find a real potential map for growing truffles in Australia but the one that just used the temperate areas from the Bureau of Meteorology (see below). So I decided to create one. I did it simple, of course it can be better detailed if I got data from land use, soils, slopes, etc.

Just used the three maps from the top and combined the area with average temperatures on the hottest month below 24ºC, the area with minimum temperatures above 3ºC and the areas with rain between 300-1500mm, and as I think any truffle growing project should have irrigation, we could even not use any below limit for rain. Annual rain over 1500mm could easily create problems with rot. It is slightly different from the old one, as for example half west Tasmania is not suitable for growing truffles (too cold or too wet), the south-west potential area changes as well.

Hope it can be useful…

Cheers,

Marcos S. Morcillo