Black Truffle

Due to COVID-19 the Fall Congress will be held online on Sunday, October 4th, 2020 from 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm EDT.

The program will include several short presentations, a question and answer session, and a short business meeting.

This event was open to the public.

Recording available to members

Agenda

(Topics will be updated prior to the event.)

  • 1:00-1:20 pm – Opening Comments
  • 1:10-1:50 pm – Alyce Chapman, CPA, Anderson Group (California) – Let’s Improve Your Truffle Farm’s Tax Situation
  • 1:50-2:30 pm – Marcos Morcillo, Micologia Forestal (Spain) – How Black Truffles Feed and Drink – The role of Soil Bacteria and a Case Study of Spanish Wells and Irrigation
  • 2:30-3:10 pm – Brian Malone, Chalk Hill Estate Vineyards and Winery in Healdsburg (California) – Truffle Cultivation
  • 3:10 -3:20 pm – Dr. Shannon Berch – Update on the Truffle Cultivation Database Project and associated Survey
  • 3:20-4:00 pm – Q&A (Discussion Panel)
  • 4:00-4:10 pm – NATGA Business Meeting

Details:

1:10-1:50 pm – Alyce Chapman- Let’s Improve Your Truffle Farm’s Tax Situation

During this presentation we will provide some tax savings tips, recordkeeping suggestions and ways to stay out of tax trouble! Hopefully, we will have some fun and amusement along the way.

About Alyce S. J. Chapman, CPA

Alyce began her accounting career in 1979 in California. She left California in 1996 to marry her junior high school sweetheart and moved to Eugene, Oregon. Since 2012 she has been a partner at Anderson Group Certified Public Accountants in Corvallis, Oregon working mostly in taxation. She is licensed in California and Oregon. Her true passion is working with small businesses and educating their owners. Being a farmer’s daughter, she especially enjoys agricultural accounting.

When she is not working Alyce enjoys spending time with her husband, five large dogs and three cats on their thirteen acres on the Willamette River.

1:50-2:30 pm – Marcos Morcillo – How Black Truffles Feed and Drink – The role of Soil Bacteria and a Case Study of Spanish Wells and Irrigation

Our research center has been focused on two main topics:

  1. truffle sexuality and reproduction, and
  2.  ecophysiology of truffle.

My lecture for the coming NATGA fall meeting will be related to this second topic. We´ll discuss the recent findings on how truffles get nutrients and water from soil and its implications on growing them. Moreover, soil has a huge biodiversity and some bacteria play a major role in truffle feeding and development. We´ll explain the results of a 4 years project on bacteria & black truffles.

About Marcos Morcillo

Marco MorcilloMarcos Morcillo started to focus on mycorrhizas after graduating in Biology at the University of Barcelona (SPAIN) in 1995.
In 1998 he became director of Micología Forestal & Aplicada (MF&A at micofora.com), a private research centre focused in truffles. His centre also specializes in technology transfer, involving leading licenced
projects abroad in order to create production nurseries for truffle and saffron milk cap infected trees. MF&A’s nurseries, including Spain and those licensed in USA, Chile, Mexico and South Africa have collectively produced over a million truffle infected trees in the last 20 years, thereby helping to establish and manage hundreds of truffle orchards in Europe and overseas. Moreover, Marcos has his own truffle orchard with more than 4.000 trees
producing melanosporum and borchii. In 2006 Marcos wrote the quality standards to certify truffle infected trees for the Government of Andalucia (Spain). He has also published two books on truffle farming:
– Manual de truficultura Andaluza. 2007. ISBN 978-84-935194-3-8
– Truffle Farming Today, a Comprehensive World Guide. 2015. ISBN 978-84- 617-1307-3
His center organizes annualy a technical truffle farming course held in Barcelona during one week, barcelonatruffletour.com

 

2:30-3:10 pm – Brian Malone, Chalk Hill Estate Vineyards and Winery in Healdsburg (California) – Truffle Cultivation

About Brian Malone

Brian Malone was born and raised in Monterey County, California. He attended college at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California where he studied production agriculture and business management. In 2005, he moved his family to Sonoma County, California to work in the wine industry. After working as a Viticulturist for four years, he began to oversee vineyard and landscape operations at Jackson Family Wines. He has grown ultra-premium winegrapes in Alexander Valley, Sonoma Valley, Bennett Valley, Russian River Valley, Chalk Hill and Sonoma Coast AVA’s. In 2010, while managing the vineyard and landscape operations at Jackson Family Wines, he developed a ten acre truffiere. In 2017, he discovered the first Tuber melanosporum truffles produced in Sonoma County, California.  Brian now oversees the estate vineyard operations for Chalk Hill Estate Vineyards and Winery in Healdsburg, Ca.

3:10 -3:20 pm – Dr. Shannon Berch – Update on the Truffle Cultivation Database Project and associated Survey

North America’s truffle industry is in need of a reliable and open source database on truffle farming. This survey, and the accompanying database, are designed to meet this need. In collecting and distributing data on truffle orchards, we hope to advance the scientific literature on truffle farming in North America and to help regional farmers (established or prospective) make decisions that are supported by empirical findings. In this presentation, I will provide an update on this project including a likely launch date.

About Dr. Shannon Berch

Shannon Berch with Australian TruffleShannon Berch retired in 2019 from and is now an Emerita Research Scientist with the British Columbia Ministry of Environment; she is also an adjunct professor with the Faculty of Land and Food Systems and an associate member in Botany at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Bryce Kendrick kindled her interest in mycology during an undergraduate course he taught at the University of Waterloo. She completed her BSc and MSc at the University of Waterloo, her PhD with Dr. J.-Andre Fortin at Laval University, and a post-doc with Dr. Jim Trappe in Corvallis OR. She is a Founding Member of the South Vancouver Island Mycological Society and of the Truffle Association of BC.

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