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That fungus, named muscodor crispans or B-23 for short, was found by Strobel in a wild pineapple in the Bolivian Amazon rainforest. He discovered upon transporting the specimen that the fungus emitted a toxic, smelly gas that killed the other microorganisms in the same container.

Indeed, B-23 demonstrated significant antibacterial and antimicrobial properties. It also happened to be a distant relative of the truffle fungus.

Some years later, when Black Boar Truffles owner Kelly Gaisford approached Strobel, a family friend, for help with isolating the truffle fungi, he had an idea. Perhaps exposing truffle tissue to the B-23 fungus would kill every organism inhibiting it from growing in a lab and leave only the pure truffle culture.

It worked.

....

“We spent so long — years — trying to find someone to isolate the truffle strain, and it was starting to feel impossible,” said Gaisford, who approached a fungal strain bank in the Netherlands and previously worked with another scientist who developed a truffle culture that ultimately died in storage.

...

To start the process, Strobel breaks open a freshly harvested truffle. He then places truffle tissues on a petri dish around a small cup with one drop of the B-23 solution. From there, the tissues are left for several weeks while the gases emitted from the B-23 cup kill the other microorganisms naturally found within truffles.

The result is a pure truffle culture, free from any contaminants.

Spores from the pure culture are then placed in plastic, air-tight “grow bags” filled with substrate, which is the organic material that fungi break down as their mycelium, or roots, colonize their environment. The grow bags are kept in a dark, temperature-controlled room where they sit for about six weeks as the truffle cultures mature.

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deadmandave said:

I haven't read very much of the literature. I did look at the studies you posted which were very interesting. Hard to say how legit their successes were or if they're just prying for more research funds.

If you're going to inoculate saplings, do you think it's best to use freshly sterilized soil?

I'm not sure what, if any, biological interplays happen with truffles, the trees and other microorganisms (besides the mycorrhizal connections)

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easybacon said:

There is a lady up in the north west USA that did her doctorate on truffles. There are apparently also symbiotic bacteria that play a role in their development. I read her paper years ago but it is behind a pay wall now sadly.

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I read her paper years ago but it is behind a pay wall now sadly.

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