3 ms·
We do know how truffles reproduce. It's on wikipedia [1] "Because truffle fungi produce their sexual fruiting bodies under ground, spores cannot be spread by w
by krisoft 5y ago
We do know how truffles reproduce. It's on wikipedia [1]
"Because truffle fungi produce their sexual fruiting bodies under ground, spores cannot be spread by wind and water. Therefore, nearly all truffles depend on mycophagous animal vectors for spore dispersal."
The truffle is full of spores. Because it is underground it can only spread far if something or someone digs it up and tries to eat it.
"When the ascospores are fully developed, the truffle begin to exude volatile compounds that serve to attract animal vectors."
The truffle smells good so something or someone finds it and digs it up.
The trick is that humans only care about a few species of mushrooms as truffles. You spread the spores of one of these good species around the roots of a tree sapling you plant and then you hope that it will establish a good healthy colony. If for any reason some other mushroom species outcompetes your truffle species you won't have any truffles. And it takes multiple years to know if that happened or not. So any experimentation in finding the right method or the right conditions to promote the truffle species and discourage the other species goes at a snail's pace.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truffle#Ecology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truffle#Ecology
- s1artibartfast 5y agoThere are degrees to how, and much is still unknown. As you point out, much of the unknown how relates to propagation and symbiotic bonding to the host trees and soil biology.
- krisoft 5y agoYou are very right. I choose to pursue other mysteries in my time here on Earth, but it would be so exciting getting to know everything there is to know about the mycorrhiza. Even just reading the literature to learn what others already know would take a long time. Sometimes I feel life is too short. Ps: Excelent work on the fjords, they turned out really pretty.
- krisoft 5y agoIf someone would want to invest a crazy amount of money to accelerate this discovery process I can imagine two things we could do: (don’t do it, it is a bad idea) - we could make a genetically modified truffle fungi which glows in the dark. Now, why would that help? The problem with monitoring the health of your fungi is that most of the body mass of it is in the form of tiny thread like stuff called mycelium. Even if you take a soil sample it is kinda hard to tell the mycelium of the right species apart from the wrong ones. With some species experts can tell them apart under microscope but the only sure way to tell what fungi’s mycelium you are looking at is to DNA sequence it. Which is expensive thus rarelly done. But if you could make your target specie glow under UV light it would make the analysis that much simpler and cheaper. So we could do it more often and thus learn about what factors favour our truffle faster. - The other option would be to engineer a kind of “immune system” to our truffle species. Basically to make “nanobots” which leave our truffle but kill other fungi. Now how on earth would one do something like that? I would start by trying to modify mycoviruses (the kind of viruses which attack fungi). Many of them are already quite picky about what kind of fungi they infect, so probably that would help us. Bonus points if we can engineer the virus such that it dies out in nature after a few rounds of reproduction so we can minimize the chances of an escape. Of course both of these ideas are very speculative, scifi level conceptual stuff. :)
- mh- 5y agowhat a great time for novel gain of function research on obscure viruses.
- b112 5y agoDeath by genetically enhanced, unstoppable fungi which grow in the lungs, and nose. Truffled to death.
- jsiaajdsdaa 5y agoCheesed to meet you
- terom 5y agoBut your infected lungs will be very simple and cheap to analyze, because they will glow in the dark.
- islon 5y agoIsn't this the plot of The Last of Us?
- b112 5y agoActually, in the brain, yeah. And a well thought out plot, too. I remember looking at old newspapers in the game, and it looks like the fungus was on crops. And I think there were allusions that the fungus was the same on which controls ants, but mutated. Very fun game.
- scythe 5y agoI was thinking more of a "point an ultrasonic imager at the dirt" kind of solution. There's got to be some way to see what's going on before nine years!
- krisoft 5y agoYeah, but the problem is that you will have fungi. It is basically guaranteed. What you care about if it is the right kind.
- felipemnoa 5y ago>>And it takes multiple years to know if that happened or not Couldn't you just do some chemical analysis to verify if your desired fungi is present in the roots?
- vintermann 5y agoYup. We don't have human-edible truffles around where I live (west coast of Norway), but it is possible to find deer truffles, unrelated fungi with a similar strategy. They release pheromones which make deer go a bit crazy. Apparently they used to be sold in apothecaries as "rutting balls" (løpekule), aphrodisiac for cows basically.