Abstract
The 930,000 km2 Kalahari covers nearly all of Botswana, the eastern third of Namibia, and Northern Cape Province of South Africa. It is a basin-like, arid and semiarid plain 900 m or more in elevation with a long history of use of truffles by its native people. Three genera and species of desert truffles have been recorded from the Kalahari: Kalaharituber pfeilii is a monotypic endemic. Eremiomyces has also been reported from Spain and Mattirolomyces is a cosmopolitan genus, at least in terms of xeric habitats, but their Kalahari species, E. echinulatus and M. austroafricanus, are endemic. Kalaharituber pfeilii has been prized as a food by the San back into their prehistory. It is harvested for personal use but also for sale to distributors for both domestic use and European markets. Depending on rain in a region where rain is undependable, its production understandably varies strongly from year to year.
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Trappe, J.M., Claridge, A.W., Kagan-Zur, V. (2014). Ecology and Distribution of Desert Truffles in the Kalahari of Southern Africa. In: Kagan-Zur, V., Roth-Bejerano, N., Sitrit, Y., Morte, A. (eds) Desert Truffles. Soil Biology, vol 38. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40096-4_13
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