THEY are black, worth their weight in gold and destined to provide more than $1 million each year for Ngati Whakaue trustees.
Nicknamed "black gold", black truffles are about to thrust the Te Arawa hapu [sub-tribe] into the European restaurant scene.
Te Arawa's Ngati Whakaue Tribal Landshas planted 4000 English oak trees, infected with the black Perigord truffle, on 10ha of land on its Wharenui Rd sheep station. Specially trained sniffer dogs will be used to hunt out the delicacies from beneath the trees.
Ngati Whakaue farm manager Trevor Smyth said there was a huge demand for the food flavouring in the Northern Hemisphere.
With soil types in Rotorua similar to those where truffles are grown in Europe, it was an ideal environment, Mr Smyth said.
"There are less truffles being produced today than 100 years ago. There is an insatiable demand for them in Europe. It's all quite staggering," he said.
Within three years, the trust hopes to be harvesting about 900kg of the delicacy annually.
Truffles are currently fetching NZ$3500kg on the European and American markets.
The tribe was doing everything it could to ensure it was operating environmentally sound farm practices, Mr Smyth said.
"We believe, long term it is lucrative land use that will be good for the environment. This is high-end land use that has a very low impact on the lake and environment," he said.
Ngati Whakaue Tribal Lands is reviewing how it uses land around the lake. Trust chief executive Rick Vallance said the trust was dedicated to finding better ways of using the land to protect the lakes.
Truffle farming would not only help them reach their goals in the future as business operators but provided an alternative to intensively farming the land.
"Environmentally it's good. Truffle farming is a high value alternative to pastoral farming in New Zealand."
