This patent opens the way to developing a "turnkey" kit to establish the sex type of the prized, richly fragrant black truffle of Périgord, a symbiotic fungus living in mutualistic association with trees. Indeed, a Franco-Italian consortium recently demonstrated that sexual distribution of the Périgord truffle in a natural field site was patchy and unbalanced, with plants colonized by strains carrying either ‘male’ or ‘female’ mating genes. This underground sex bias partly explains the low truffle production of some truffle orchards. These results are of considerable practical impact for optimizing host plant inoculation and increasing production in truffle fields.
The consequences for the truffle industry are considerable. The sexing of truffles will enable improvements to the production of planted truffles, which account for the majority of European production.
Another outcome of this discovery is that it will enable species identification using genetic techniques. This is particularly important to distinguish the Périgord black truffle (Tuber melanosporum) from another, cheaper kind of black truffle, Tuber indicum from China, which has been flooding the market. This influx has created a problem because unscrupulous dealers in France have been mixing the two and selling them all as truffles of Périgord, Although the two truffles look the same, the Chinese truffles tend to have a chemical odour and very little flavour. The Périgord truffles have an intense, slightly musky fragrance, with a hint of sweetness, and a rich, earthy flavour. They are as much as ten times the price of the Chinese ones.
Patent reference: the patent was filed on 7 SEPTEMBER 2010 as number 10 175517.1, and is entitled "MOLECULAR METHOD FOR THE IDENTIFICATION OF MATING TYPE GENES OF TRUFFLE SPECIES".
Scientific contact:
Francis MARTIN
UMR IaM Interactions Arbres/Micro-organismes (UMR Inra/Nancy)
INRA
54280 CHAMPENOUX
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