Truffles no trifling matter

By SIMON COLLINS science reporter

Investors will need a strong stomach to take advantage of New Zealand's next big export industry: mushrooms on trees.

The Northern Hemisphere market for truffles and other precious tree-hugging mushrooms is more than $4 billion a year, says Crop & Food Research scientist Dr Ian Hall.

But strong stomachs will be needed - not to eat them, because they are regarded as delicacies, but to risk growing tiny plants which thieves could sell in Europe for up to $17,000 a kilogram.

Security is tight. When the Herald asked to go with Dr Hall to a new truffle farm north of Auckland this week, the owners only agreed to photographs on the condition that neither they nor the farm's location were identified.

Dr Hall refused to provide the address in advance, and instead offered to take our photographer there from a rendezvous in town.

Another farm, Mangawhai Truffiere, was less restrictive, but only because its trees are still only half-planted and it is not yet producing truffles.

Dr Hall also declined to provide details of the techniques he is using to grow mushrooms on trees when he spoke at the Pacific Rim Biotechnology Conference in Auckland on Monday.

He believes New Zealand's technology is way ahead of the competitors.

"The Tasmanians are making some progress but their crop this year was probably only 2kg," he said.

"There are noises from South Africa, Argentina and Chile but they are 10 to 15 years behind us. You have got to get your technology up and running first."

Dr Hall, who is based at Crop & Food's Invermay research centre near Dunedin, said about 100 truffle plantations had been established in North Auckland, the Bay of Plenty, Gisborne, Paraparaumu, Nelson, North Canterbury and Otago. Only six were producing truffles so far, with production still worth less than $150,000 a year.

"Truffles grow on the roots of oak and hazel. Part of my job is to produce enough infected plants - we put the fungus on the roots of the tree and sell the tree," he said.

"People put them in the ground, and they may have to wait 10 years to start getting truffles."

But, he said, truffles were just the start of a potential industry growing many different kinds of mycorrhizal mushrooms - mushrooms which grow on tree roots.

"About half of the world's species of edible mushrooms belong to the mycorrhizal group," he said.

"Some of these are very expensive and have well-established worldwide markets measured in billions of dollars.

"All of the mycorrhizal mushrooms are seasonal, best eaten fresh and do not preserve well. Few of the Northern Hemisphere's commercially important species have made the accidental journey to the Southern Hemisphere.

"There is, therefore, a golden opportunity to introduce these species and produce the high-value foods in New Zealand for out-of-season Northern Hemisphere markets."

Two of the most potentially valuable mushrooms for New Zealand are two which Dr Hall and Chinese professor Wang Yun have grown on pine trees - a Japanese delicacy called shoro, and saffron milk cap, a fungus with pale orange spots and pale green blemishes.

"Instead of growing plantations just for timber, why not grow for mushrooms as well and get a crop while the trees are still growing?" he asked.

He said the prices of the most prized species such as Italian white truffles and Perigord black truffles reached "obscene" levels in the European producing season because supplies from the wild in the Northern Hemisphere had plunged by about 90 per cent in the past 100 years.

"Out of season, the black truffle is fetching two or three times the price that it does in season, because it's a seller's market," he said.

"Even if we get 5 per cent of the in-season market, that would be very nice."

Crop & Food