Research and Development

During the past 12 years Tim Terry's group of companies has had funding from Aus Industry (www.ausindustry.gov.au) for $250,000 on a dollar for dollar basis to study irrigation scheduling and nutritional requirements for truffle production. He has also received a grant from New Industries development Program (www.affa.gov.au) for $22,000 to develop an electronic nose to detect the mature truffles, which involved sending a scientist to France to take air samples from mature truffles then building the instrument, which was done in conjunction with UNSW chemo sensor department.

Our ongoing and major research to date includes:

• Study tours of France.
• Soil sampling in producing plantations in Europe for comparative purposes .
• Plant nutrition trials.
• Irrigation scheduling trials .
• Pruning trials.
• Cultivation and soil aeration trials.
• Studying competing fungi and bacteria.
• Insects and their effects on production.
• Fencing trials for pest control.
• DNA analysis for tree inoculation.

Truffles Australis received a Tasmanian Government grant of $45,000 in July 2006 which is jointly funded by Truffles Australis to do research into the breeding of high producing truffle trees using cloning techniques and the mychorrization of those trees in vitro.

This work is well underway with some great results so far, however the real goal has not yet been achieved, but work will continue along the path so we can supply the highest quality mycorrhized trees to give the best chance to our growers of producing truffles on a commercial level at the earliest possible time.

We are currently doing extensive research into the nutritional requirements for the truffle in different soil types. It has already become quite clear that there is an enormous amount of variations in these requirements as our Australian soils are so variable within a very small area.