Dogs are human’s best friends and a truffle’s worst nightmare. With their incredible sense of smell, certain breeds make the perfect companions for truffle hunting. Food & Wine reports that two dogs recently discovered two new truffle species in the U.S.
Scientists have dubbed one Tuber canirevelatum, meaning “dog-found” truffle. A trained truffle dog named Monza found it with her trainer, Lois Martin. The other is called Tuber cumberlandense and is named after Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau, where truffle dog Luca and her trainer, Margaret Townsend, found it. The discoveries are reported in the journal Mycologia.
Martin realized that Tuber canirevelatum looked and smelled like no other truffle found in North America, so she sent it to Gregory Bonito, associate professor at Michigan State University’s College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. After doing DNA analysis on both specimens, Bonito and his graduate student, Alassane Sow, determined T. canirevelatum had never been discovered. The T. cumberlandense truffle was sold under different labels but had never received a formal name or description from scientists. Sow said in a statement that the analysis shows that both species have “aromatic compounds found in some of the most valuable truffle species.”
People will pay a pretty penny for truffles. Guinness World Records reports that the most expensive one in the world sold for $330,000 in December 2007. There are plenty of reasons why the underground mushrooms are so costly. We spoke to Vittorio Giordano, the vice president and truffle guru at Urbani Truffles USA, in 2016 to provide insight. He explained that truffles are rare and hard to farm. People have tried to do so for decades with no success. It also takes a lot of effort to preserve the fungi. When a truffle is dug up, people must work quickly because the mushroom begins to lose water as soon as it’s unearthed. Therefore, a lot of money is required to transport them. Other reasons for their prohibitive price tag include their limited harvest seasons, high demand, and delicacy.
Read More About Dogs:
This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.
