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Current progress on truffle submerged fermentation: a promising alternative to its fruiting bodies

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Abstract

Truffle (Tuber spp.), also known as “underground gold,” is popular in various cuisines because of its unique and characteristic aroma. Currently, truffle fruiting bodies are mostly obtained from nature and semi-artificial cultivation. However, the former source is scarce, and the latter is time-consuming, usually taking 4 to 12 years before harvest of the fruiting body. The truffle submerged fermentation process was first developed in Tang’s lab as an alternative to its fruiting bodies. To the best of our knowledge, most reports of truffle submerged fermentation come from Tang’s group. This review examines the current state of the truffle submerged fermentation process. First, the strategy to optimize the truffle submerged fermentation process is summarized; the final conditions yielded not only the highest reported truffle biomass but also the highest production of extracellular and intracellular polysaccharides. Second, the comparison of metabolites produced by truffle fermentation and fruiting bodies is presented, and the former were superior to the latter. Third, metabolites (i.e., volatile organic compounds, equivalent umami concentration, and sterol) derived from truffle fermentation could be regulated by fermentation process optimization. These findings indicated that submerged fermentation of truffles can be used for commercial production of biomass and metabolites as a promising alternative to generating its fruiting bodies in bioreactor.

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Acknowledgments

Financial supports from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC, Project Nos. 21176059, 21206035, and 21376066), the Hubei Provincial Natural Science Foundation for Agriculture (2012DBA20001), and the High-Tech Industry Development Program for Innovative Research Team in Wuhan Municipality (2013070204020049) are gratefully acknowledged. Ya-Jie Tang also thanks the Chutian Scholar Program (Hubei Provincial Department of Education, China) (2006), the National High Level Talents Special Support Plan (“Million People Plan”) from the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee, Training Program for the Youth Leading Talents by Ministry of Science and Technology, Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-11-0961), and Training Program for Top Talents in Hubei Province.

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  1. Key Laboratory of Fermentation Engineering (Ministry of Education), Hubei Provincial Cooperative Innovation Center of Industrial Fermentation, Hubei University of Technology, Wuhan, 430068, China

    Ya-Jie Tang, Rui-Sang Liu & Hong-Mei Li

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  1. Ya-Jie Tang
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  2. Rui-Sang Liu
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  3. Hong-Mei Li
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Correspondence to Ya-Jie Tang.

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Ya-Jie Tang and Rui-Sang Liu contributed equally to this work.

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Tang, YJ., Liu, RS. & Li, HM. Current progress on truffle submerged fermentation: a promising alternative to its fruiting bodies. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 99, 2041–2053 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-015-6379-6

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