Reliable truffle soil testing is now availableTruffle soil testing was not a part of the earliest attempts to establish cultivated Truffière, instead they focused on finding areas with similar soil and climate conditions to the native growing regions. The results were less than consistent, especially when compared with later attempts to establish production on heavily limed acidic soil. This led to the assumptions that acidic soils lacked potentially competitive fungi that could persist under alkaline conditions and that truffles had a high requirement for Calcium. The latter assumption, at least, is likely to be invalid since Calcium is known to be a secondary nutrient in all organisms, with cellular mechanisms in both animals and plants operating to actively reduce cellular Calcium concentrations. In fact it appears to be the presence of “Active Carbonate” within the Brûlé that is the more important criterion for truffle formation. Although it is somewhat curious that the predominant parent material for soils in native Black Truffle areas is Limestone (and not Dolomite), while the soils appear to be relatively high in both exchangeable Magnesium and Sodium. As such, productive black truffle soils would be considered ‘Alkaline Sodic’ in nature, rather than strictly Calcic. For this reason, both the exchangeable and total Ca:Mg ratios are important measures for truffle soil testing. Observations from several locations (based on their relative productivity) and several references in the literature further indicate that Phosphorus is more likely to be the important tree nutrient supplied by the fungus – and probably also important to the fungus itself. This element is immobilized in alkaline soils as tri-Calcium Phosphate, making it difficult for plants to access. However, research has shown that Tuber spp. do utilize Apatite (a Phosphate mineral) in the soil. Consequently, one of the most important measures on your soil test will be that of Total Phosphorus. In contrast to the situation with other crops, the aim will be to have a high Total Phosphorus and low values for plant available P (Olsen or Colwell P). Truffle soil testing is important in five ways:
we have now developed a soil test that will do all this. The test is for Black Truffles (Tuber melanosporum), but research is also well advanced into a soil test for white truffles (Tuber magnatum). The black truffle soil test is now available for only $237.60 per sample (including GST) and it gives you everything necessary to either establish a productive Truffière or to maintain an established one. It can even help in revitalizing an older Truffière that is suffering a decline in production. If you would like to have a soil test done, you will need to collect 500g of soil for testing. You can send it to me in an ordinary ziplock plastic bag. Instructions on how to collect the sample can be found here. The laboratory requires payment before releasing the results, so you should pay for you tests here. You don't need a PayPal account to do this, but you will need to include your postal address and the number of samples you will be paying for.
Truffle Soil Testing Price List. |
