For years, China has been one of the world’s largest suppliers of a rare delicacy — the matsutake mushroom. But this year, a prolonged drought and heat waves across the country’s south have slashed the harvest and sent prices skyrocketing.
Matsutake — “pine mushroom” in Japanese — are prized in many other Asian countries for their scarcity and distinct spicy flavor, which comes with a tinge of cinnamon and cypress. They are often served grilled and in rice and soups. Japan, the world’s largest consumer of the matsutake, reserves almost all domestic harvest for its own consumption and imports a large haul from China, according to Japan’s Agriculture Ministry.
“The harvest last year was already low, but this year, it is significantly lower,” said Zhao Jiuen, a mushroom wholesaler in Diqing, a mountainous region in Yunnan. Yunnan, like many provinces in southern China, has experienced its warmest and driest summer since Beijing established official weather records in 1961. Zhaotong, a mountainous city in the province’s north that is known for mild weather, logged a record 111.2 degrees Fahrenheit in July. A county in Zhaotong has started rationing drinking water amid a drought.
In 2020, the matsutake was designated as a threatened species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A year later, China added it to a protected-species list., researchers are trying to establish an artificial cultivation technique, but with limited success.
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