Australia's truffle industry may owe part of its success to a surprising underground secret

Imagine ordering a truffle dish in a fancy restaurant, and you might picture pricey gourmet mushrooms from France or Italy. But recent decades have seen an upstart on the truffle scene. Today, one of the world's largest producers of some of the most prized truffles, known as French black or Périgord truffles (Tuber melanosporum), isn't in the Northern Hemisphere at all—it's Australia.