On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Not to be confused with Chocolate truffle. A truffle is the fruiting body of a truffle fries ascomycete fungus, predominantly one of the many species of the genus Tuber. Some truffle species are highly prized as food.

French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin called truffles “the diamond of the kitchen”. Truffles are cultivated and harvested from natural environments. Theophrastus in the 4th century BCE. Rome and Thracia in the Classical period identified three kinds of truffles: Tuber melanosporum, T. Truffles were rarely used during the Middle Ages. During the Renaissance, truffles regained popularity in Europe and were honoured at the court of King Francis I of France. They were popular in Parisian markets in the 1780s, imported seasonally from truffle grounds, where peasants had long enjoyed them.

This section focuses on the cultivation of truffles in the narrow sense, i. The most learned men have sought to ascertain the secret and fancied they discovered the seed. Their promises, however, were vain, and no planting was ever followed by a harvest. This perhaps is all right, for as one of the great values of truffles is their dearness, perhaps they would be less highly esteemed if they were cheaper. France, had the idea of transplanting some seedlings that he had collected at the foot of oak trees known to host truffles in their root system. Mauléon saw an “obvious symbiosis” between the oak tree, the rocky soil, and the truffle and attempted to reproduce such an environment by taking acorns from trees known to have produced truffles and sowing them in chalky soil. Others imitated these successful attempts in France and Italy.

In the late 19th century, an epidemic of phylloxera destroyed many of the vineyards in southern France. Reasons given for this decline include the Industrial Revolution, the subsequent rural flight and the multiple European wars of the 20th century, which reduced the rural population. The situation changed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with researchers in France and Italy establishing mycorrhizas with truffle spores. Beginning from the 1980s, truffle plantations are compensating for some of the decline in wild truffles, and exist in various countries including France, Italy, Spain and Australia. A critical phase of the cultivation is the quality control of the mycorrhizal plants. Between 7 and 10 years are needed for the truffles to develop their mycorrhizal network, and only after that do the host plants come into production.

Complete soil analysis to avoid contamination by other dominant fungi and very strict control of the formation of mycorrhizae are necessary to ensure the success of a plantation. Southern Hemisphere were harvested in Gisborne, New Zealand in 1993. New Zealand’s first burgundy truffle was found in July 2012 at a Waipara truffle farm. It weighed 330 g and was found by the farm owner’s beagle. In 1999, the first Australian truffles were harvested in Tasmania, the result of eight years of work.

Trees were inoculated with the truffle fungus to create a local truffle industry. Their success and the value of the resulting truffles has encouraged a small industry to develop. Truffle production has expanded into the colder regions of Victoria, New South Wales and Western Australia. In June 2014, A grower harvested Australia’s largest truffle from their property at Robertson, in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. Périgord truffles were first farmed in Tennessee in 2007. 2009 season, one farm produced about 200 pounds of truffles, but Eastern filbert blight almost entirely wiped out the hazel trees by 2013 and production dropped, essentially ending the business. The origin of the word “truffle” is from the Tamazight language in North Africa, where the truffle is native to the Atlas Mountains.

Italian term for truffle because of superficial similarities. Evolution of subterranean fruiting bodies from above-ground mushrooms. Phylogenetic analysis has demonstrated the convergent evolution of the ectomycorrhizal trophic mode in diverse fungi. The subphylum, Pezizomycotina, containing the order Pezizales, is approximately 400 million years old. The oldest ectomycorrhizal fossil is from the Eocene about 50 million years ago. This indicates that the soft bodies of ectomycorrhizal fungi do not easily fossilise. Molecular clockwork has suggested the evolution of ectomycorrhizal fungi occurred approximately 130 million years ago.