Planting treasure: Burlington-based Mycorrhiza Biotech LLC revolutionizes truffle cultivation by cutting growing time.

• Author: Saylor, Teri
• Position: SPONSORED SECTION: LIFE SCIENCES HANDBOOK

Nancy Rosborough's phone hasn't stopped ringing since January, when after a decade of trying she announced her first harvest of truffles, the rare and expensive subterranean fungi that sell for hundreds of dollars per pound and upscale restaurant chefs love to use in their dishes. "We've been perfecting our processes for the past few years, when it looked like we weren't doing anything. We have been preparing for this day."

As founder and CEO of Burlington-based Mycorrhiza Biotech LLC, Rosborough has revolutionized truffle cultivation. She developed a patent-pending process that propagates loblolly pine seedlings inoculated with white truffle spores. But her work in biotechnology started about a dozen years ago, when she was searching for a way to save the family's 200-acre farm, which it has owned for generations.

Rosborough grew up in Washington, D.C.; and her mother wasn't interested in living a farm life. But it was during the summers, when she headed south to the rolling hills of Gibsonville, that she fell in love with the farm. "I always felt a real connection to this area and to the farm. We have a ledger from 1913 that my grandfather and his brother kept. But what used to be farmland and dirt roads are now subdivisions," she says. While she wanted to keep the farm working, she had no interest in cultivating row crops. She found her solution when her mother sent her an article about Garland Gourmet Mushrooms & Truffles Inc., a commercial truffle grower in Hillsborough. "I thought, 'Well, truffles grow on the roots of trees. How hard can it be?"

Truffles are more prolific overseas, where they grow wild. Most U.S. truffle operations are. in Oregon, though there are orchards scattered across the country. Black truffles are the most common species. They grow on the roots of hardwood trees, such as hazelnut and oak, which take about 15 years to mature. And that's about when truffles start to show up.

Rosborough's company is the first in North America to grow white truffles on the roots of loblolly pines, which mature in about a quarter of the time it takes hardwoods. After germination is confirmed, she and her team plant seedlings at a site prepared with the nutrients that truffles need to flourish. The process from germination to planting can take up to a year. Her team continues to work on the site after planting, discouraging pathogens and competing fungi, both of which could destroy the fledgling truffles.

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