11–20 of 33 posts
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/11/04/500726210/episo...
Most notably, he budgets $10,000 pear year for parking tickets as a cost of doing business!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for saving me the click.
The way I read it, the answer is more likely yes, but it's not confirmed yet, as it takes 5 yaers to get the first crop. This seems to be one of the precious few cases where Betteridge's law doesn't apply; the question mark is there simply because there is still a question, but all available information points to a positive outcome. Not to mention this is New York Times.
The way I see it, the title of an article should provide the key information. The title as is tells us nothing.
There's already an alternative truffle source - China. They are considered substantially inferior to European truffles.
Now, if they had figured out to grow the mycelium in vitro at scale, I'd be impressed...
1: https://whatscookingamerica.net/Truffles/OregonTruffles.htm
Planet Money had a wonderful episode recently about a boy who's been selling truffles out of the back of his car since he was 15: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/11/04/500726210/episo... Most notably, he budgets $10,000 pear year for parking tickets as a cost of doing business!
I would be interested in the economic impact of suddenly making truffles as near-worthless as common mushrooms since truffles come almost exclusively from tiny producers -- for many, their entire year's income comes from the yearly truffle market.
I guess my feeling is I wonder if truffle scarcity is a problem worth solving. The downside is destroying a lot of people's livelihood for a product that really isn't that important (people that don't have truffles really aren't wishing they did for the most part.)
The scarcity isn't because black truffles are just so amazing but because there's an allure to eating them. They do have an amazing aroma and every year for about a month or two I am making truffle-everything. But if they were turned into a mass-produced commodity, I would expect them to not be quite so interesting.
This startup is sowing the seeds to destroying the very market they want to disrupt.
> Has the American Truffle Company figured it out? “It remains to be seen how well their system will work,” Mr. Michaels said. “The frustrating thing about the truffle is we still don’t know the basic conditions.” No. Why do headlines still get written this way?
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines . Also https://twitter.com/BetteridgesLaw .
Earlier quoted context omitted.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines . Also https://twitter.com/BetteridgesLaw .
See tome's law: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9077549
This is something that I expect the tissue engineering community to break. I know that sounds weird but according to folks I've talked to who were looking at various lab grown structures, fungi are significantly easier than say meat. And an artificial hamburger at $350/lb sounds impractical, artificial white truffles at $350/lb sounds like a money making opportunity.
On top of this, truffles have complex ecological requirements (mutualisms with plants and associations with soil microbiota), so unlike saprophytic species they are very difficult to grow in artificial culture to start with (even just spore germination is tricky). Fruiting is tied to seasonal changes in the host plant and we're only just beginning to understand the genetics underlying all of this.
I agree with you actually, but I think it is some decades away and will require lots of GM, and lots of work on how to get control over metabolic and fruiting systems without changing flavor profiles.