Helyszín címkék:
Transdanubia could be the new Istria: mushrooms more expensive than gold grow here
Szabó Sára
Tuber magnatum, the Istrian truffle, was a culinary rarity in Italy even in the 1700s. Its distinctive, intense, unrivalled aroma even convinced the gourmet Italian sovereign back then. No other nations could compete, as this mushroom naturally occurs mainly in the Istria peninsula and Piedmont in northern Italy. It can occasionally be found elsewhere, preferring mainly floodplain forests with calcareous soils, but it takes a lot of luck and persistence to find its habitats. Istrian truffles are a real rarity, with demand far exceeding the supply. Due to its high price, it is also known as “the gold of the earth” or, to put it poetically, a mushroom worth its weight in gold.
The price of a kilo Tuber magnatum ranges between 3000-5000 euros, but mushrooms worth millions of euros have been found even in Baranya County, Hungary.
Just as the cicada, the harlequin and the Asian tiger mosquito have got into our country, so the Istrian truffle has found us.
Hungary was one of Europe's leading truffle exporters even before the Second World War, and in the last twenty years we have begun to rediscover our potentials. It can be observed that the Hungarian climate is favourable for various truffle species, and a few decades ago the Istrian truffle also found its way here. The first mushrooms appeared in the late 1990s in the southern Mediterranean parts of our country. Since then, collectors have been harvesting several kilos a year. But where exactly? It is a secret. It is said that obsessive mushroom hunters would not even tell their own mothers about the location of this treasure.
A breakthrough in recent years is the discovery that Tuber magnatum can also be grown.
Compared to Agaricales, truffles look for a living organism – a host plant – with which to live in symbiosis. This is known as the mycorrhizal network: the fungal filaments entangle the root system of the tree, so the two plants help each other to get nutrients. The French (somewhat envious of the Italian trifle monopoly) have long experimented with artificially mycorrhizal planting, which is the artificial creation of this symbiosis. In 2020, it was a world premiere when years of research bore fruit of years of work: in one such plantation, Tuber magnatum has come into production. This proved what was only speculation until then, that Istrian truffles can actually be grown.
It is thought that the Italians have been aware of all this for a long time, but they treat all the behind-the-scenes secrets about truffles from Istria as almost national secrets. This is confirmed by József Ulrich, President of the “Szarvasgomba-termesztők Országos Egyesülete” (National Association of Truffle Growers), who has visited Italian farmers on several occasions to gain experience. He is one of the first in Hungary to start growing Tuber magnatum, for which he has high hopes. “I planted a hectare of “magnatum forest” in 2020, but unfortunately we do not know when it will come into production. I use the same method for this with which I grow other truffles. It worked with them, so I have high hopes for the Istrian version,” he says. Let us hope that the experiment will be successful and we are certainly going to report on his results.
