Industries · Emerging
Truffle host trees
Truffle host trees — oak and hazelnut — are one of the emerging areas we're interested in. Tissue culture is well suited to the clonal-material side of an industry built on a tree-and-fungus partnership.
Host trees and the fungus
Truffles grow in mycorrhizal association with the roots of oak and hazelnut. The truffle industry supply chain therefore has two pieces: the host tree (which can be propagated by seed, cutting, or tissue culture) and the mycorrhizal inoculation (handled in the nursery). Tissue culture is relevant to the first piece — producing clonal, true-to-type host trees at scale.
- Clonal oak and hazelnut trees from selected mother material
- Uniform rootstock for downstream inoculation with truffle mycelium
- Scalable supply for new orchard establishment
Note: The mycorrhizal inoculation itself is not a tissue culture step — it is done by specialist nurseries on rooted trees. It is the propagation side of this pipeline we're interested in.
References
- AgriFutures Australia. Australian Truffle Program of Research (AUSTRUF).
- AgriFutures Australia. Improving truffle orchard floor management.
Also at MeristemLab: which plant-pathogen test answers which question from MeristemLab Diagnostics, and production-record software for tissue-culture labs.