The pure culture of Tuber mycelia and their use in the cultivation of the truffles.

Truffle cultivation involves raising infected plants in greenhouses and then planting them into suitable sites. One of the biggest problems encountered is that the commercial Tuber infected plants are often scarcely or not infected with the inoculated species of Tuber or contaminated with other ectomycorrhizal fungi. Tuber infected plants are usually obtained by inoculating plants using methodologies, such as spore inoculation method or mother plant technique, perfected during the 1970s and 1980s. In the past many attempts have been made to isolate truffle mycelia but these were found to grow far too slowly to make them suitable for inoculation purposes. Moreover, they were often isolated from mycorrhizae and no tools were available to verify whether the mycelia isolated belonged to the desired Tuber genus. Pure cultures of T. borchii, T.melanosporum, T. macrosporum, T. brumale, T. uncinatum are now available and their identity has been confirmed using molecular methods and subsequently morphological features of the mycelia were described. Methods were then developed for in vitro mycorrhizal synthesis using these Tuber mycelia and recently under greenhouse conditions. Mycelial inoculation might now be used for the large scale production of contaminant free truffle infected plants. It might also allow the selection of fungal strains that are better adapted to a particular combination of soil, climate and host.