ROME

A Chinese fungus is threatening the survival of a European delicacy, the Périgord black truffle. Scientists have discovered the Chinese truffle, a fast-growing variety, on an Italian plantation.

A team led by Claude Murat, of the University of Turin, wrote in New Phytologist journal: “We dreaded it and it has happened.” The scientists said that they feared that the Chinese invader, which looks similar to the European varieties but has almost no taste, would out-compete its highly prized European relative. It may even be able to interbreed with the Périgord black truffle, potentially replacing it altogether with a hybrid.

The Périgord black truffle, a key ingredient in French cuisine, fetches £400-600 per kilogram. Over the past century harvests of the Périgord, or Tuber melanosporum, have declined sharply, with annual sales falling from more than 1,500 tonnes in 1870 to less than 100 tonnes today. The gap in the market has since the mid1990s increasingly been filled by sales of the inferior Chinese black truffle, Tuber indicum.

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