A team of researchers has announced the first successful cultivation in Japan of truffles, an expensive ingredient in Western cooking that is said to be one of the world's top three luxury foods, along with foie gras and caviar.
Researchers from the Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, said the truffles have a rich flavor on par with the most commonly consumed European truffles. The team will work to further hone cultivation techniques with a goal of seeing stable production in about 10 years.
The species cultivated was Tuber japonicum, a type of white truffle that grows wild in Japan. The fungus forms symbiotic relationships called mycorrhiza with plants such as oak trees where they colonize the plant's roots via long fungal threads.
