Why is it so hard to replicate the ideal conditions are plants like truffle or wasabi? Like I get they can only grow under certain conditions but what about it’s surroundings is so hard to replicate?
In: 14
With truffles at least it’s because those conditions aren’t actually well understood and the timescales are long so it’s very difficult to brute force through a trial and error approach. It’s not just about specific light level, temperature or even specific nutrient availability as with many things, that has been tried and failed. It seems to function symbiotically with various surrounding life forms, definitely trees but maybe more like soil bacteria or other fungi, and it takes time for the fungus to build infrastructure before it starts producing the bits we like to eat. Over that time it is exposed to a variety of environmental conditions. Which other organisms and which conditions are necessary and which are noise is not fully understood.
Mostly you COULD but you gotta keep things at a reasonable cost. Like maybe you could plant a tree and farm it with good conditions for 80 years to get three mushrooms but like…. How do you sell that? Even in a lab as a test who’s gonna do that?
Unlike most plants that are able to convert sunlight into energy in a
process called photosynthesis, truffles are instead totally dependent on
certain trees to carry out this process for them. In return, the
truffle helps its host tree by using its hyphae to reach nutrients and
water from pockets of soil that the tree cannot reach by itself.1 This kind of a symbiotic relationship between fungi and the roots of a tree is called mycorrhiza.
https://www.foodunfolded.com/article/how-truffles-are-grown
Latest Answers