Within the UK: this month the Forestry Commission officially open their grant applications for the establishment of native woodland (new woodland creation grant) which significantly off-sets the costs of establishing your truffle orchard. Most areas of the UK are suitable and through the partnership approach we help you every step of the way, including planting plans and grant applications.

We are delighted to announce that we’ve been joined by Isianne Neve. Issi is intrigued by truffle cultivation, has a strong interest in plants and ecology and will be helping manage our databases and pushing our research forward. Issi is also likely to be one of the first people you speak to when calling- office hours for telephone calls are 9am-1pm (GMT) Monday-Friday and the contact number is +44(0)1433 659167.

During a recent senior staff meeting at the forestry commission (England) we took members to one of our newly planted truffle plantations owned by a Lincolnshire farmer. The meeting provided an opportunity for the forestry commission to learn a little more about truffles, how they grow and importantly how they are managed from a tree perspective. The meeting also allowed us to exchange ideas with the forestry commission experts.

Just before Christmas we held an open day for the Chefs’ Guild at the truffle-dog training-school in Hampshire. The event was a huge success with talks on the range and diversity of truffle species, truffle cultivation with microscope demonstrations, a fantastic truffle lunch and truffle-training/hunting demonstrations. Mufti, Marion’s prized truffle hound, was really the star of the day. Jose Suter (of the chefs’ guild)  said “This has been an absolutely fascinating and fun day, we can’t wait to come back!”.

Recently, you may have seen several media articles claiming that a new project is being launched in France to clone the black truffle (Tuber melanosporum).  These articles made headlines around the world and led to claims that truffle production will increase with scientists cloning truffles and trees. In fact, such experimentation is not new and has been the source of many projects for at least the past 20 years. Several studies have focused on truffle-strain selection as well as selecting and cloning well-performing host trees.

The dates of the next International Workshop on Edible Mycorrhiza Mushrooms (IWEMM6) have just been released and our very own Dr Paul Thomas will be sitting on the international scientific committee.

In early November 08 we started to collate results from our Welsh plantation, where we are seeing excellent brûlé development (burnt areas around the tree base caused by the truffle growth) just 9 – 12 months after planting. We recorded data from 77 trees and only seven were not yet showing signs of brûlé development. This is really good news as we were not expecting such good development for at least two more years. We are now planning a full vegetation survey across the site as well as biological soil measurements to see what is happening below ground.

Over the summer we were delighted to help a good friend of ours, Paul Merret, with growing truffles on his allotment. Paul, an award winning Michelin-starred chef and TV presenter, has recorded his first attempts at allotment gardening in his new book ‘Using the Plot: Tales of an Allotment Chef’. This account of self-sufficiency in the 21st century is a great read and beautifully produced. With the section on growing truffles, we think it makes a perfect gift - but then again, we’re truffle mad and so are perhaps a little biased!

The beginning of October saw an exciting e-mail arrive at Mycorrhizal Systems HQ. We received a claim that the most expensive white truffle species, Tuber magnatum, had been found by a gardener in Southern England. Descriptions in the e-mail of the truffle and how/where it was found seemed to substantiate the claim. However, after a request for a sample for DNA testing the ‘truffle finder’ disappeared. Did he really find white truffles and disappear to sell his hoard? Or did the alleged find turn out to be something else and the embarrassment prevent further contact?

Since opening the dog school, many hunters have come through our door and our expert trainer has worked with a wide range of breeds. Their abilities, across the board, never cease to amaze. Recently, we have been discussing starting further research on breed specific behavioural characteristics and scenting abilities, when along came the Barbets! The Barbet is an active breed, equally enjoying work and play with a thick shaggy coat over its whole body (“barbe” is the French word for beard). A review of the breed-specific training day can be found here: www.barbet.org.uk/news21.htm