Trouble with truffles
Long-feared Chinese species infiltrates Italian soil
By Susan Milius
A Chinese truffle with a reputation as a takeover artist has turned up growing in the soil of an Italian truffle plantation.
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“We dreaded it, and it has happened!” Claude Murat of the University of Torino in Italy and his colleagues write in an upcoming paper in New Phytologist.
Samples of soil and tree roots in an unnamed plantation in the Italian Piedmont revealed DNA from the Chinese black truffle, Tuber indicum, Murat says. Soil samples also contained DNA from the desired Périgord truffle, or T. melanosporum, one of the European natives that out-prices its Chinese relative.