This past month we’ve had to say a fond farewell to Emma Bleakly-Dean, who’s moving overseas to start a new adventure and will continue to work with us from time to time. We’ve also been joined by two new recruits, Heather Sutton and Catriona Jones. Heather has taken on Emma’s role and will be your first point of contact and will be helping out at this years events. Ecologist Catriona has joined us on a research role and has already started mining our data-sets and designing new trials For further information on truffles, contact us now: 0845 519 5808

The summer or burgundy truffle (Tuber aestivum/uncinatum) is a species with a huge market and a wide geographic spread. Wild finds of this species have been recorded from areas as diverse as Northern Africa to Russia. With a flavour that varies through the season, early summer varieties are often mildly flavoured and quite clean on the palate, while those harvested from late summer onwards can be really quite intense – in a similar vein to the Perigord truffle (Tuber melanosporum).

We had a great response to our Trees for Schools project. Our final trees of the season went out to Carnforth North Road Primary School and their 5-8 year old students.

For those in the know, a recent article in the prestigious science journal, Nature, has caused waves in the truffle world. Having no less than 50 authors, this excellent piece of research helps to start to answer some of the current questions in truffle research. One of the big questions has been whether the truffle itself is responsible for its complex aroma or whether it is other organisms that call the truffle fruiting body home. Through sequencing the genome it can now be conclusively stated that the truffle itself is responsible for the majority of its heady scent –