The valuable tuber was the biggest ever discovered by Lazzari, 79, in his more than 50 years of hunting the delicacy.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in all these years,” he told reporters.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes.

“It’s not me who should get the credit, but Pepe, my six-year-old bloodhound.”

The find was made in the woods near Città di Castello, an Umbrian town known for its museum housing works by Raphael, Luca Signorelli, Andrea della Robbia, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Domenico Ghirlandaio, and others.

In December 2021, Italian truffle hunting made it onto the UNESCO list of the world’s intangible cultural heritage, a UNESCO panel announced in Paris.

Practitioners of the traditional practice put in their bid eight years previously.

Farm group Coldiretti said the accolade is an important step towards defending a system marked by a special relationship with nature in a rite that is rich with anthropological and cultural aspects.

“It is a tradition that is decisive for many mountain rural areas which are disadvantaged from the tourist and gastronomic standpoints,” the free trade association of agricultural entrepreneurs and farmers said.

The art of truffle hunting, Coldiretti said, involves a network of around 73,600 practictioners, called ‘tartufai’, organised into 45 groups in a national federation ranging from 44,000 individual tartufai to 20,000 ‘free searchers’.

According to Coldiretti, Truffle hunting joins Sicilian puppetry (2008), Tenor singing (2000), the Med diet (2010), Cremonese violin making (2012), processional shoulder-borne machines (2013) and Neapolitan pizza makers (2017) on the UNESCO roll of honour.

Other Italian treasures to be so honoured include falconry, dry-stone walling, the Prosecco Hills, and the beech woods of Aspromonte, the farmers’ group said.

Gastronomes and enthusiasts of the prized and pungent fungus known as ‘the white truffle’ had a great 2021 season with prices rising to record levels due to a COVID-linked scarcity.

The most prestigious truffles are found mostly in the Piedmont region near the town of Alba, where a yearly fair celebrating and auctioning the culinary treasure takes place.

White truffles are more pungent, rare and expensive than black ones, which have a longer growing season and are more common in the centre and south of Italy.

In November, the annual World Truffle Auction at the Grinzane Cavour castle outside of Alba once again attracted tycoons from all over the world to contend for the most valued tubers on the market that season.

Nestling in the roots of about 50 trees – mostly oaks but also hazels, poplars, mulberries and willows – truffles are rooted out by specially trained dogs.

With demand shooting up over recent years, hunters have become increasingly competitive and there have even been reports of skulduggery such as hamstringing or even poisoning the champion dogs of rivals.

ANSA