Australia maybe a newcomer in growing black truffles but is now the world's fourth-largest producer.
Image captionWhen his dogs sniff out a prized black truffle under the soil, Nigel Wood says it is always an exciting moment for the accompanying humans too.If you asked people to try to picture hunting for truffles, the expensive subterranean fungi, many would no doubt imagine men with dogs going through woodlands in France or Italy.
While exact country-by-country figures are difficult to come by, given the secrecy that surrounds the"diamonds in the dirt", Australia is expected to harvest between 14 and 18 tonnes of French blacks this year. Not native to Australia, they were first introduced to the country in the mid 1990s, with the first Australian truffles unearthed in 1999. To cultivate or farm the truffles, trees - typically oak and hazelnut saplings - are replanted after their roots have been inoculated with the fungus' spores. Then five to eight years later you can start to harvest the resulting black truffles.
"We export to 31 countries, and don't have the supply by even half to match the demand from overseas," says Alex Wilson, head of sales at The Truffle & Wine Co - Australia's first commercial truffle farm or truffière, and the single largest producer of black truffles in the southern hemisphere.Truffle Melbourne
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