Journal
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BIOMETEOROLOGY
Volume 59, Issue 7, Pages 907-915Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s00484-014-0891-8
Keywords
Desert truffle; Productivity; Climate variability; Precipitation timing; Sahara Desert; Drylands
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Desert truffles are edible hypogenous fungi that are very well adapted to conditions of aridity in arid and semi-arid regions. This study aims to highlight the influence of climatic factors on the productivity of desert truffles under hyper-arid climatic conditions of the Sahara Desert in Algeria, with assumptions that the more varying climatic factors, mainly rainfall, are more crucial for the development and production of desert truffles. At seven separate sites, desert truffles were collected by systematic sampling between 2006 and 2012. The effects of climate parameters of each site on the productivities (g/ha/year) of desert truffle species were tested using generalized linear models (GLMs). The annual mean of the total production recorded for all three harvested species (Terfezia arenaria, Terfezia claveryi, and Tirmania nivea) was 785.43 +/- 743.39 g/ha. Tirmania nivea was commonly present over the sampled sites with an occurrence of 70 +/- 10.1 %. GLMs revealed that total and specific productivities were closely positively related to autumnal precipitations occurring during October-December, which is the critical pre-breeding period for both desert truffles and host plant species. The other climatic parameters have statistically no effect on the annual variation of desert truffle productivity.
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