Growers from all over the country visited the city on the weekend for the Australian Truffle Growers’ Association conference, which included a field trip to a truffiere at the Pinnacle.

While the industry is growing and farmers are experiencing a sellers’ market, Dr Ian Hall from New Zealand said research was crucial to explore how to best grow the exotic species of fungus in Australian conditions.

“Worldwide, the industry is starved of good scientific information. For us down in the southern hemisphere, what we see in the northern hemisphere can be applied but there are still lots of questions completely unanswered, so people tend to fall back on folklore,” he said.

Dr Hall said most growers went into truffles with the idea of capitalising on their high retail value of about $3000 per kilogram.

“For most people it’s definitely an investment for the big time. For a few, it’s just about seeing if they can grow truffles in the back garden,” he said.

Growing truffles can be an expensive and time-consuming process.

Dr Hall started the industry in New Zealand in the 1980s.

“We had our first truffle in 1993 and the first commercial harvest was in 1997,” he said.