Prof. P W Thomas

Last week at the Napa Truffle Festival...a huge joy when orchard owners you've guided produce their first truffles and even better when I'm lucky enough to be there on the day!

Congrats to Mark, Maria, Steve and truffle dog Mila! 👏👏

The first paper from our practical mycoforestry research project is out!

...focussing on the food-forestry land-use conflict, we describe the production of young trees with mycorrhizae of the excellent edible species Imleria badia (the bay boletus).

Link: fs.revistas.csic.es/index.php/fs...

This week:
Still finding truffles in my hedge at home (Scotland). 25% of the trees now producing at year 5 (trees from Mycorrhizal Systems Ltd).
Working with Ruairi Hafferty Hay, for his first PhD fieldwork... monitoring of our newly out-planted mycoforestry trees!

New mycoforestry paper - reviewing saffron milk caps as a large-scale food production system.

Congrats to Andre Dhungana - his first PhD output - citing 230 papers and translating a wealth of literature.

Full open-access paper link: www.mdpi.com/3609052 @mdpiopenaccess.bsky.social

🌳 An experimental truffle orchard we established many years back, producing superb quality in England. This site is unusual in that it was recently felled woodland, with many trees left in-situ… | P... 🌳 An experimental truffle orchard we established many years back, producing superb quality in England. This site is unusual in that it was recently felled woodland, with many trees left in-situ. Aft...

An atypical approach to truffle cultivation- planting on a recently felled site and around standing mature trees. This site is a nice case-study that is now producing excellent quality truffles!

www.linkedin.com/posts/profpa...

Photo from Kew Gardens of a wooden bridge among trees and plants in autumn colours. With the BMS logo and the words: Autumn Open Meeting 2025. Saturday 29th November, Lady Sainsbury Lecture Theatre, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew.

Photo of Paul Thomas (University of Stirling & Mycorrhizal Systems Ltd) in a woodland with a dog.

Join us at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, for our Autumn Open Meeting on 29th November. Speakers include Paul Thomas @profpwthomas.bsky.social - University of Stirling & Mycorrhizal Systems Ltd - expert on truffle biology, cultivation, hunting & cooking ➡️ www.britmycolsoc.org.uk/aom_2025.html

YouTube video by Ben Sweet Climate Change and Truffles | An Interview with Prof. Paul Thomas

Interested about the latest truffle research and cultivation? Heres a podcast episode I recently did with Ben Sweet, including discussion about potential collaborative research opportunities…

youtu.be/H9QyytEIvdA

Field work with Carmen Carmona, Flora Rendell-Bhatti and Neve Dee - first mycoforestry trial site in Scotland!

The first job - soil sampling for physiochemical/biological/DNA recording before planting the trees we've grown at Mycorrhizal Systems Ltd - with grateful support from Mossy Earth

Autumn Open Meeting 2025 The BMS Autumn Open Meeting is held at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. The meeting features expert speakers covering a variety of mycological topics, is free to attend and open to all.

Interested in truffle cultivation or our research? I'll be speaking at the British Mycological Society meeting at Kew Gardens (29th of November) -
www.britmycolsoc.org.uk/aom_2025.html

...and the UK Truffle Festival in West Sussex (15th of November) -
www.trufflefestival.co.uk

Come say hi!

Spotlight on our most recent intern, Eva Fruzsina Felegyhazi (shown here with Dr. Zahid) from Eötvös Loránd University and with grateful support from @rootbenefit.bsky.social– Eva has been learning about DNA sequencing for a collaborative project. As we say in Scotland, Haste Ye Back!

For those of us working in mycoforestry, here is a nice opportunity from Scientific Reports and editor David Kothamasi...

50,000! Wow, well done!

...a busy and start to September
Peter McKenna of The Gannet visited to see our reserach programme, taste regional truffles and prepared a spectacular on-board meal!
We also hosted a valued fench colleague and friend Dr. Luis-Bernardo Vázquez from Mexico, to deepen mycoforestry collaboration🍄

Groundbreaking: first truffle cultivated on UK island | About | University of Stirling

...offers a low-input, resilient crop that could bring real economic opportunities to island and rural communities.
With the rise of food tourism, this could just as easily support a boutique agri-tourism industry as it could offer new income for landowners

www.stir.ac.uk/news/2025/se...

Very happy to be launching a new #CitizenScience campaign within the scope of ‪@fundive-fungi.bsky.social‬.

You can download, share (and cite!) the campaign' accompanying flyer published in the the open-access platform Zenodo: zenodo.org/records/1679...
#FunDive #Mycology #Conservation #iNat

This summer, we welcomed Aswathi Gopa Kumar Nair, PhD student from Jena, Germany, to Mycorrhizal Systems Ltd. Her research on Tuber aestivum ecology and fungal interactions brings fresh insight for truffle growers. Results coming soon in open-access—stay tuned!

thanks Andy- there may be a good opportunity next year to run a round table on this. I'm working on a project draft and will update you if this gets accepted!

Thanks Andy!

We hadn't considered this but I will present this idea to the group- I’m hoping we can do a lot more work in this space 🤞

📣 New paper on food production in woodland-based systems

🌳 Drivers, benefits, barriers and enablers - transformational, not incremental, shifts are needed🌳

Led by Steffen Hirth, with fellow coauthors Matthew Paterson and Ivan Drlička.

Open access link: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

...I participated in a round-table discussion on fungal protein- a nutritional perspective. This isn’t my core field, so to learn from nutrition experts was really quite fascinating. 🍄‍🟫 🔬

Just published- interesting for those of us engaged with fungi but who wish to know more: lnkd.in/dFA8pPZJ