Abstract
Based on an assessment of soil and climatic conditions in British Columbia (BC), the Truffle Association of British Columbia (TABC) determined that the cultivation of Mediterranean Tuber melanosporum and Tuber aestivum might be possible in the warmer parts of the province. With the cooperation of independent truffle growers, TABC assessed the colonization of host tree roots collected from eight truffle orchards planted 2–7 years earlier using morphological and molecular criteria. Both Tuber species persisted on the roots of inoculated trees in six of the eight truffle orchards studied. The identity of Tuber ectomycorrhizas that had been characterized morphologically as differing from those of T. melanosporum and T. aestivum were determined using DNA sequence analysis to belong to three species of truffles native to the Pacific Northwest. One of those species, Tuber anniae, had been previously reported from BC, but the other two, Tuber menseri nom. prov. and Tuber beyerlei, are reported here from BC for the first time. Recently, production of three Périgord black truffles in one truffle orchard and one Burgundy truffle in another orchard demonstrates that these truffles are able to fruit in BC.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to the Agroforestry Development Initiative Fund for funding this research, to all of the truffle growers who participated in this study, and to Charles Lefevre of New World Truffières for supporting this work with advice on truffle cultivation and root sampling. Special thanks go to Wayne Haddow, BC Ministry of Agriculture, for being one of the first people in BC to see the possibility of a Mediterranean truffle industry in British Columbia. The Fragment Analysis and DNA Sequencing Services (FADSS) at the University of British Columbia-Okanagan carried out the PCR amplification and sequencing of ectomycorrhizas. Dr. Mary Berbee, University of British Columbia, sequenced the Tuber melanosporum and Tuber aestivum truffles produced in BC. Gregory Bonito was supported through the US Department of Energy, Office of Biological and Environmental Research, Genome Science Program.
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Berch, S.M., Bonito, G. Cultivation of Mediterranean species of Tuber (Tuberaceae) in British Columbia, Canada. Mycorrhiza 24, 473–479 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00572-014-0562-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00572-014-0562-y