Climate change is to blame for Germany’s truffle decline

As the climate changes, the growing conditions for many foods are also changing. One of them is especially popular, but it is also currently particularly endangered.

Birmensdorf – There’s bad news for mushroom lovers: As one study showed, edible Burgundy truffles are becoming increasingly rare in Germany and Switzerland. The reason for this is climate change. through Dry summer with high temperatures Conditions for truffles are greatly exacerbated.

Worrying study: truffles could completely disappear from the forest

As the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research announced Thursday, an average summer temperature one degree higher could reduce the burgundy truffle harvest by about a quarter, and in some locations by about 70 percent. “Our results show that Burgundy truffles are threatened by an alarming trend toward increased summer drought in Europe,” says ecologist and study author Brian Steedinger of the University of Konstanz, who worked with WSL.

Exposing truffles, which has been caused by climate change, has environmental as well as culinary consequences. Because fungi provide host trees with important nutrients and water. This makes it an important part of the forest ecosystem. subordinate Meanwhile, climate change is also affecting viticulture in Spain.

Not only truffles: other products can soon become luxury goods

The results of the studies were published in the journal Global Change Biology. Particularly alarming: according to the study, with an average summer temperature of more than three degrees, there are no more truffles left. Since the burgundy black truffle is one of the most traded varieties worldwide, a luxury product may become more expensive.

Truffles are not the only products that can become expensive with climate change. “Both chocolate and coffee could become rare luxury foods again as a result of climate change,” Monica Zurek, a senior researcher at Oxford University’s Institute for Environmental Change, said last September. BBC Future. Here, too, the increase in temperature plays a particularly important role. For example, large tracts of land in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, one of the main cocoa growing regions, may become unsuitable if the global temperature rises to 2 degrees Celsius. (gh)