Yousef Karam: How Lightning Helps Truffles Grow in the Desert

Yousef Karam, an expert gardener and sustainable practitioner explains how the process of thunder and lightening helps the treasured wild desert truffle of the Middle East grow. On the desert after a rainfall, knowledgeable Middle Easterners collect the "black kame," Terfezia bouderi, and the "brown kame," Terfezia claveryi. They prefer the darker ones to the other varieties. These truffles have a symbiotic relationship with flowering plants in the rock rose family just like truffles in other places grow around oaks. In Europe subterranean mushroom is found within the living roots of chestnut, oak, hazel, and beech trees. In the video filmed at Charles St. Gardens in The Food Forest - http://www.charlesstreetgardens.org/csg/?page_id=31 This video was taken by Barbara Sekhmet Reyes, my loving partner. According to myth and legend these mushrooms are formed where lightning strikes the desert sands, Yousef, describes in his sage-like manner the scientific explanation of this process: "when lightning passes through the air the energy causes Nitrogen and Oxygen atoms to react to form different types of nitrous oxides. These in turn dissolve and react with rain water to form nitrogen compounds including ammonia which are strong fertilizers and essential to protein formation". Since the desert truffles are more common than the European version fo the fungi (thus justifying their cost). In fact these truffles/Terfezia do not have the same flavor as European truffles but are more affordable. Forest truffles (Tuber genus) typically cost $100 per kilogram and Italian truffles may sell for up to $2200 per kilogram, while Terfezia truffles sold as of 2002 in Riyadh for $80 to $105 a kilo, and in recent years have reached not higher than $270. Terfeziaceae or desert truffles, which grown beneath the soil in the desert and have never been grown under cultivation, lie in wait in arid areas all around the Mediterranean basin. Unlike their European cousin, these truffles are collected by local Bedouin, so nodogs or pigs are used to find them. Instead the Bedouin identify them through tiny cracks in the soil. Desert truffles grow close to the surface and they reach a fair size, up to 6 inches occasionally, pushing the surface to indicate the site of the prized fungus. They , are found in arid and semi-arid zones of the Kalahari desert, Iraq and Kuwait, the Sahara and Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Libya, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and China.