Discovery could herald a revolution in the way we revegetate our farmland... CSIRO scientist Neale Bougher examines the elusive fungi. Photo: The West Australian

    It is something of a Holy Grail for fungi experts, a rare truffle related to the fairy toadstool that has eluded scientists worldwide for decades, and it has been found in Australia.
    The discovery of Amarrendia oleosa, a fungus that has become the foundation of a whole new genus of truffle, has electrified the scientific community - but do not expect to see it on the menu anytime soon.
    It is so rare that no one has dared taste it, and importers of truffles used for cooking are sceptical that its taste could rival the European varieties that fetch as much as $2000 a kilo in Sydney. Of the hundreds of species identified worldwide, only three are suitable for eating.
    Nevertheless, the discovery of the new truffle fills a big gap in scientific knowledge, and could herald a revolution in the way we revegetate our farmland.
    It was unearthed during a four-year CSIRO project to work out how to cheaply and simply reintroduce native fungi into the nutrient-poor farm soil to make it self-sustaining in the long term.
    Scientists had long suspected that there was a truffle related to the Amanita genus of mushrooms, which includes fairy toadstools and death cap mushrooms, but efforts to find it in Europe and North America proved fruitless.
    Then last year Neale Bougher, a research scientist with CSIRO Forestry and Forest Products, stumbled across the marble-sized, white truffles while analysing soil at an old bauxite mine near Perth.
    "I contained myself until I got back to the lab and I put it under the microscope and saw those structures that matched the ones you see in the Amanita mushrooms, and that's when I jumped up and down."
    Scientists are only just beginning to understand the role fungi play in sustaining plant and animal life, but it is known that they use a vast network of underground threads to retrieve nutrients for plants, and break down wood and leaves to make fertile new soil.
    Dr Bougher said: "We are realising there's a huge resource that we are not even considering when we revegetate our farmland. It's not good enough just to put back plants and animals when we have got this huge diversity of native soil mechanisms ... that actually support that vegetation."
    Australia has some of the most diverse and unique variety of truffles in the world, but very few have yet been identified.
    Although the process of indentifying native fungi is still at an early stage, 300 species of truffle have been found, only 10 to 20 per cent of the estimated total here. Of those found, 95 per cent are unique to Australia.
    In the year since his discovery, Dr Bougher and a colleague, Teresa Lebel, of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne, have identified four other new species in the Amarrendia genus, and published their findings in Australian Systematic Botany. The truffles have also been found in Victoria and Tasmania.