Sergio Sánchez

• PhD
• Agrifood Research and Technology Centre of Aragon

Sphaerosporella brunnea is a pioneer and opportunist ectomycorrhizal species, and the most common fungal competitor in nurseries producing plants mycorrhized with Tuber species. Our objective was to learn more about its life cycle as the first step to manage its presence in greenhouses. Conidiation and formation of resting spore-like structures wer...

The quality of seedlings colonized by Tuber melanosporum is one of the main factors that contributes to the success or failure of a truffle crop. Truffle cultivation has quickly grown in European countries and elsewhere, so a commonly shared seedling evaluation method is needed. Five evaluation methods are currently published in the literature: thr...

Owners of black truffle (Tuber melanosporum) plantations are concerned about the persistence of its mycorrhizas and mycelium in the soil, especially until the appearance of the "truffle burn" areas and the triggering of sporocarp production, at least 5-7 years after planting truffle-inoculated seedlings. During this period, the farmer does not know...

Since the first truffle plantations were established in France, Italy and other parts in the world, many studies have been carried out to improve their productivity and sustainability. Success of plantations is clearly related to the mycorrhizal status of the host trees over the years, from inoculated seedlings to truffle-producing trees. The exper...

The black truffle (Tuber melanosporum Vittad.) is an important natural resource due to its relevance as a delicacy in gastronomy. Different aspects of this hypogeous fungus species have been studied, including population genetics of French and Italian distribution ranges. Although those studies include some Spanish populations, this is the first ti...

Black truffle, Tuber melanosporum Vittad., production is increasing due to an improvement in cultivation management and to the demand for this highly appreciated fungus. However, this intensification of truffle cultivation has led to the appearance of problems related to pest incidence. Specifically, the truffle beetle, Leiodes cinnamomeus (Panzer,...

This dataset includes counts of truffle beetles from four growing seasons in a truffle orchard of Northeast Spain. Moreover, data on sex ratio and damages to truffle bodies are included. Finally, weather variables for the four seasons are included.

The aroma is critical in the reproductive biology of truffles and in their commercial quality. However, previous research has almost exclusively focused on characterizing ripe ascocarps. We characterized the volatilome of the highly-prized black truffle (Tuber melanosporum) ascocarps from July, in an early development stage, to March, in the late h...

BACKGROUND Truffle cultivation is evolving rapidly and new agronomic practices such as ‘truffle nests’ (localized peat amendments of the orchard soil) are being developed. Truffle nests improve the shape of truffles and their depth in the soil and reduce the occurrence of insect damage but have also raised concerns about their impact on the ripenes...

Nowadays, the truffle aroma attribute is not included as a quality parameter in the current recommendation that explains the truffle quality (UNECE standard 53 FFV3) and establishes the truffle commercial categories. However, the aroma is the main reason why truffles are worldwide appreciated. Indeed, more than 30 aromatic molecules compose it, and...

The fungal biodiversity associated with a stable plant community appears to vary from year to year. To analyse the annual behaviour in the formation of fruiting bodies, a statistical study of the data obtained for 4 years (2009–2012) in an apparently undisturbed Mediterranean ecosystem dominated by the holm oak (Quercus ilex L. subsp. ballota (Desf...

Truffle growers devote great efforts to improve black truffle productivity, developing agronomic practices such as 'truffle nests' (peat amendments that are supplemented with truffle spore inoculum). It has been hypothesized that improved fruiting associated with nests is linked to stimulation of truffle mycelia previously established in soil or to...

Background and Aims Intercropping of truffle-producing trees with aromatic plants is used to improve profitability of truffle orchards during the initial 4–7 years. However, after that period the viability of this system is challenged by the appearance of brûlés, an area around host tree characterised by scarce plant cover where the fungus exhibits...

Nowadays black truffles are so highly valued that truffled products are available in supermarkets whereas fresh truffle is mainly used in the restaurants. It is known that truffle aroma can change because heat treatments, but there is no scientific evidence about what molecules are transferred, in which concentration, and how much time is needed to...

The use of mycorrhized seedlings has been critical in the success of modern truffle cultivation, which nowadays supplies most black truffles to markets. Ascospore inoculation has been traditionally used to produce these seedlings, but little scientific information is publicly available on the inoculation methods applied or on the possibility of com...

Truffles are highly valued by their aromatic properties and can aromatize food products. However, the truffle aroma could be reduced or lost with heat treatments (pasteurization and sterilization) necessary for products security and safety. In this study, sunflower oil and honey were aromatized with black truffle (lyophilized and fresh) using two d...

Sustainable agriculture has drawn attention to the maintenance and enhancement of soil health. However, research on soil quality has been carried out mainly in field crops and, to a lesser extent, in mature orchards, neglecting the relevance of assessing the soil quality status in the first years of tree plantations. Therefore, the aim of this stud...

The price of the truffle species Tuber melanosporum and Tuber magnatum can be up to fifty times higher, or even more, than the cheapest edible truffle species due to their appreciated aroma and low production levels. This aroma is seriously affected after the application of treatments for the conservation of food products, usually thermal (freezing...

The highly prized black truffle is a fungus mostly harvested in orchards planted with mycorrhizal seedlings. It is an obligatory outcrossing fungus with a single MAT locus containing two alternative mating-type idiomorphs. In the orchards, at the mycorrhizal level, these mating types are frequently spatially segregated. Some studies found that this...

The methodology used for the determination of macrofungal diversity in Mediterranean areas differs in the time of sampling and the number of years displayed, making it difficult to compare results. Furthermore, the results could be refuted because the studies are being conducted over an insufficient number of years or without considering the variat...

A PLE (pressurized liquid extraction) method was adjusted following a full-factorial experimental design to obtain bioactive-enriched fractions from Tuber aestivum and Terfezia claveryi. Temperature, time and solvent (water, ethanol and ethanol–water 1:1) parameters were investigated. The response variables investigated were: obtained yield and the...

Truffles are a well-known worldwide product mainly appreciated by their unique aroma, which is composed by more than 50 volatile compounds. However, to this day, no one has accomplished to find the aromatic key that evokes the real aroma of truffles for its use as food flavoring. Among them, black truffle was selected for extraction with supercriti...

The highly prized black truffle (Tuber melanosporum) has become a model species for ectomycorrhizal fungi biology. However, several questions concerning its reproductive phase remain unanswered. To provide new hypotheses on the fruitbody formation process, we have explored the causal links among development characters of black truffle fruitbodies t...

The cultivation of the ectomycorrhizal fungus Tuber melanosporum has considerably spread in recent years throughout the world. During the first years of truffle cultivation, weed control is a key practice to improve the establishment of host trees and the proliferation of the fungus in the soil. Glyphosate is nowadays the most commonly used herbici...

The effects of gamma irradiation (0.5, 1.0, 1.5 and 2.5 kGy doses) on Tuber aestivum packaged under modified atmosphere was evaluated. The respiration rate, microbial populations, sensory characteristics and content of bioactive compounds (total carbohydrates, chitins, β-glucans, proteins, total phenols and sterols) were monitored from immediately...

Shiitake (Lentinula edodes) is a fungus that attracts the attention of consumers and researchers due to its flavour and bioactive compounds with biological activities. However, it swiftly loses quality because of its short shelf life. The present work evaluated the shelf life of cultivated shiitake carpophores with a weekly monitoring of the physic...

Non-wood forest products (NWFPs) are gaining in importance and recognition in recent decades, both in the EU and in Spain, mainly due to the relevance they may have for rural development as generators of employment and as ecological products with a high added value. Currently, the basic information on each of the products is atomized, it is difficu...

In Tuber melanosporum cultivation, fruitbody traits are gaining relevance due to their increasing prominence on prices. We investigated the edaphic and temporal patterns of fruitbody traits and characterised the effect of truffle nests (localised peat-based amendment supplemented with T. melanosporum spores) on traits. We monitored fruitbody traits...

Black truffle is characterized by a black ascocarp and white veins. This hypogeous fruit body is known for its aroma. Understanding metabolic variation during ripening can shed light on truffle biology. In this work, the comprehensive polar metabolome and the volatile organic compounds of T. melanosporum were studied at different ripening stages by...

Truffles, besides the appreciated aromatic compounds, contain other molecules with interesting bioactive properties. A screening of fungal sterols and β-glucans within different truffle species and locations was carried out. These compounds were extracted with pressurized liquids (PLE) generating enriched fractions. Extraction efficiency was studie...

Sphaerosporella brunnea is a pioneer ectomycorrhizal fungus with facul-tative saprophytic capacities. Here, we sequenced the genome of S. brunnea strain Sb_GMNB300, which is estimated at 51.6 Mb in size with 872 assembled contigs accounting for 12,597 predicted coding genes. This genome will be useful for comparative studies of Pezizales ectomycorr...

Agricultural transformation has led to scarcity and fragmentation of Mediterranean forests with unknown effects on the fungal diversity they harbour. La Orbada forest is an isolated holm-oak forest in the province of Salamanca, in western Iberian Peninsula. This forest is threatened by various factors, mainly: habitat fragmentation, the possible ba...

Black truffle is a highly appreciated edible fungus that grows wild in southwestern Europe, although its cultivation has recently spread to other continents. In Spain the widespread exploitation of wild truffles began only after 1950, whereas plantations play a relevant role in truffle production from the late 1990s. However, most plantations conti...

The European black truffle is a mycorrhizal fungus native to Spanish Mediterranean forests. In most Spanish regions it was originally commercially harvested in the second half of the 20th century. Experts agree that wild truffle yields suffered a sharp decline during the 1970s and 1980s. However, official statistics for Spanish harvest are scarce a...

This paper continues the taxonomic revision of the species collected during the campaign of 2015 in the National Park of Ordesa and Monte Perdido. 409 taxa are added to the previous inventory, some of them from alpine-subalpine ecology, of which 76% correspond to phylum Basidiomycota and 22.2% to Ascomycota. They are presented in the form of a chec...

Abandoned charcoal hearths constitute a very particular habitat for spontaneous fruiting of Tuber melanosporum, leading some harvesters to hypothesise that the fungus could benefit from the alterations that these soils underwent. However, ecological mechanisms involved in this relation are not fully elucidated yet. As a first step to understand it,...

Pecan, Carya illinoinensis, is an economically important nut producing tree that can establish ectomycorrhizal symbiosis with a high diversity of fungi. In the southern USA, truffles (Tuber spp.) sometimes fruit prolifically in cultivated pecan orchards and regularly associate with pecan roots as ectomycorrhizae (ECMs). It has been demonstrated tha...

Truffles are edible hypogeous ascomycetes highly appreciated worldwide, especially the black truffle (Tuber melanosporum Vittad.). In recent decades, the cultivation of the black truffle has expanded across the Mediterranean climate regions in and outside its native range. Members of the Thelephoraceae (Thelephorales, Agaricomycetes, Basidiomycota)...

espanolLa trufa de verano (Tuber aestivum, incluyendo Tuber uncinatum) es una especie de un gran valor economico y social, que se produce de modo silvestre en toda Europa, norte de Africa y parte de Oriente medio. Los esfuerzos de cultivo de esta especie en la peninsula iberica han permanecido en un segundo plano debido a las condiciones adecuadas...

Black truffle (Tuber melanosporum Vittad.) has very specific environmental requirements. We integrated these requirements in a geographic information system and weighted them depending on their importance for the presence of the species, based on previous field and laboratory experience. The parameters considered were divided into three groups: (i)...

Black truffle (Tuber melanosporum Vittad.) cultivation is especially complicated by their environmental requirements. We propose in this paper a distribution model of habitat for Huesca province (Spain). We used conditioning and restricting factors to the presence of the species in territory based on previous experiences, and supported by a broad c...

INTRODUCTION Sphaerosporella brunnea (Alb. y Schwein.) Svrček y Kubička (anamorph: Dichobotrys brunnea Hennebert) is a pioneer and opportunist ectomycorrhizal species presenting a facultatively saprophytic behaviour, and it is the most common competitor fungus in nurseries producing plants mycorrhized with Tuber species (Figure 1). Our objective in...

AGROINFORME proporcionan una zona de contacto profundo como resultado del de-sarrollo sincronizado de ambos organismos. La simbiosis mutua-lista conlleva que ambos socios se beneficien de esta relación, prin-cipalmente mediante intercambio de agua y nutrientes esenciales. Las raíces constituyen el hábitat de los hongos micorrícicos, y estos últimos...

Aim of study: In recent years an increase in pests and diseases associated with truffle plantations has been detected in Spain. The appearance of tumor malformations in trunks and branches of Quercus ilex L. must be highlighted. These bumps have expanded dramatically since the increase in the number and density of truffle plantations. This patholog...

Trufficulture is one of the few agro-forestry profitable activities that grows in the Mediterranean area. The history of the Spanish trufficulture began with the wild-truffle hunting, that starts strongly in the 50 decade of the past century and persist nowadays; and the development of the black truffle plantations, which started in the 1970s and b...

In order to have a global view of the commercial production of mycorrhizal plants in the world, a national and international research has been conducted to identify professional nurseries and some productive characteristics of this sector. National (Spanish) and international databases of nurseries producing mycorrhizal plants have been created. Al...