General Information

The truffle.org web site is aimed to promote research on truffle and ectomycorrhizae. At present the main emphasis of this project is to provide methods for the identification of truffles both at the morphological and molecular level.

Morphological character of ascocarps and mycorrhizae are coded in a DELTA database (TuberKey), that allows a computer-guided identification of 18 different truffle species.

Molecural identification methods are organized in a data base that contains more than 20 protocols for DNA purification and analysis (Italian language only).

To help information exchange in the scientific community we maintain a data base of people involved in truffle research worldwide and an open forum for discussions.

We are also interested in truffle phylogeny. Classification schemes based on cladistic analysis of morphological data as well as phylogenetic trees based on 18S and ITS rRNA will be added soon to this site.

The main part of the data organized in this site have been produced by the project "Tuber: biotecnologie della micorrizazione" jointly sponsored by 10 Regioni and the National Research Council (CNR) of Italy.

This site is hosted by the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Parma and is maintained by Claudio Rivetti and Riccardo Percudani.

Last updated 10/09/99