In the winter of 2016, ecologist Laure Schneider-Maunoury went truffle hunting in France. But she wasn’t looking to add the fungus to a culinary delicacy. Schneider-Maunoury, a graduate student at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, was on the hunt for the truffle’s missing father, the form that contributes genes to generate the aromatic, edible fruiting body. Researchers still don’t know where these paternal truffles live or how the maternal and paternal partners find each other. Scientists are on the hunt for the paternal partner that sires the spores within the edible fruiting body of the black truffle. Image courtesy of Shutterstock/Vitalina Rybakova. It’s a mystery with major implications for farmers, chefs, and foodies enamored with the pungent, expensive black truffle ( Tuber melanosporum ). Slivers of the fungus, which can run hundreds of dollars per pound, grace dishes from risottos to pizzas. Although farmers can raise truffles in orchards of oak or hazelnut, where the fungus joins with the tree roots, the crop remains what some call “protodomesticated” because growers can’t control its reproduction. Complicating matters, yields from truffle grounds have plummeted in the past century, likely a result of dwindling habitat. “For most truffle growers, it’s a game—you never know if you’re going to get something out,” says Aurelie Deveau, a researcher in the field of ecogenomics who studies truffles at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) in Champenoux, France. If researchers could work out the reproductive cycle, it might suggest more effective farming practices. The mystery and the potential ramifications have led researchers such as Schneider-Maunoury and her advisor, mycological ecologist Marc-Andre Selosse of the Paris museum, to go looking for the truffle father. Their recent work follows a decade of investigations into T. melanosporum reproduction. The part of the truffle people eat is the …