A black truffle species native to Taiwan discovered in Taitung County’s mountainous Taimali Township (太麻里) has been named Tuber taitung, the Taiwan Forestry Research Institute (TFRI) said on Tuesday.
T Taitung, first discovered in 2017, is the fifth indigenous truffle species found in Taiwan, the Council of Agriculture’s institute said in a statement.
The previous four are T lithocarpii, T piceanum, T elevatireticulatum and T formosanum, it said.
Photo courtesy of the Taiwan Forestry Research Institute via CNA
T Taitung was found at the lowest altitude of all the truffle species discovered in Taiwan so far, which makes it suitable for research and artificial cultivation, the TFRI said.
To protect the rare truffles from extinction, researchers from the institute and its Taimali Research Center are monitoring how the species grows and how it can be preserved, it said.
As most research investigating truffles tend to occur in the west — for example, along the Batongguan Historic Trail (八通關古道) or in Taichung County’s Dasyueshan National Forest Recreation Area (大雪山國家森林遊樂區) — it was surprising when a team discovered T taitung in late October 2017 in eastern Taiwan, it said.
Seven T taitung truffles were collected between late November 2017 and January 2018, with more discovered in December 2019 and February, the institute said.
The discovery was not publicly announced until Tuesday, as the examination and investigation into the newly discovered species took a significant amount of time, TFRI assistant researcher Lin Chieh-lung (林介龍) said.
TFRI Deputy Director Wu Meng-ling (吳孟玲) said that although the institute has been developing techniques to cultivate native truffle species in Taiwan, it would need more time until they can be produced on a commercial scale, as they take about 10 years to grow.
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