- [Narrator] This is Aki.

He's a special dog with a very special skill.

It's so special, Aki was brought to North Carolina from Serbia.

- This is Aki.

Aki is our truffle dog.

He is a Lagotto Romagnolo.

He had to have his passport.

He came in, changed planes, went to Washington, D.C, got off the plane, got on a van, and came to the farm.

- [Narrator] That's right, Aki is a truffle dog, actually, a truffle-finding dog.

But wait, what's a truffle?

- A truffle is the fruiting body of a particular kind of fungus.

- [Narrator] Truffles have been around for centuries.

They've been used in dishes around the world and are prized for their unique taste and aroma.

These days, foodies everywhere have created a kind of insanity around truffles, and that makes Aki's special skills all the more valuable.

- To get him to work, I have to give him a command of search.

Search, search!

[Aki eager sniffing] [footsteps rustling] Find the truffle, [Aki eager sniffing] find the truffle.

[Aki eager sniffing] He smells the truffle, he can tell it, and then he'll paw it.

When trained.

[speakers crosstalk] - [Narrator] At around two years old, Aki is a veteran.

On any given shift, he'll find dozens of them growing around the roots of these loblolly pine trees in the northern part of the Piedmont.

And yes, when he finds 'em, he gets treats.

- Ah-ah, ah-ah!

Good dog, good dog, good boy!

Today, he's getting pepperoni.

- [Narrator] Jeffrey Coker is another one of Aki's colleagues.

He's a plant scientist who found himself in the truffle business about 10 years ago.

- In nature, they're biologically designed to attract animals to eat them.

So they're sitting in the ground.

And if you're in the ground, how do you lure animals to you?

You have to put off an aroma, a really strong aroma.

So that's what truffles are doing.

They're trying to send their spores elsewhere to reproduce fungi using really strong aroma.

- White means October.

We found this truffle in October crowning.

- [Narrator] Growing truffles is difficult.

People in the United States have been trying to do it for a long time, but the conditions need to be just right.

- The truffle that we're growing is called the bianchetto truffle.

The scientific name is tuber borchii.

It grows in Italy, France, Spain.

It's a European truffle.

Our stock comes primarily from Italy.

Whenever you find one, it's just like dealing with an iceberg.

You never know how big it is, [laughing] until you pull back far enough.

- [Narrator] There are forage truffles, which are found in the wild, and then there are farm truffles.

Here at Burwell Farms, they've built it, maintained an orchard specially designed to produce them.

- The biggest reason why our farm works is really just the basic biology, having two robust species; having a very robust tree partnered with a very robust European truffle.

- [Narrator] The tree he's talking about here is a loblolly pine, which is found everywhere in the Piedmont.

The region also has a balanced soil made up of sand, silt, and clay.

The trouble is pines grow well in acidic soil, but truffles don't, and both tree and truffle need to grow in this orchard.

So Coker's team is bringing the acid levels in the soil down to help the truffles.

Meanwhile, the truffles help the pines by carrying water and nutrients into their roots.

It's a match made in, well, North Carolina.

- Good boy.

- So again, it's that powerful symbiosis is what allows the pine trees to exist in the soil conditions that we create.

- [Narrator] Besides the soil challenges, here's the other thing about truffle farming, it takes a long time.

And this farm has been growing for a little over 10 years, but they're also in the business of cultivating young trees to expand their own stock and sell to other farms as well.

Coker's team places tiny truffle fungi on the roots of these baby pines in a processed called inoculation.

- So this is our greenhouse.

Behind me are thousands of young loblolly pine trees that we've placed the truffle fungus on the roots.

As you can see here, there are lots of little white fungal threads all through this root system.

And this pine tree could successfully be placed in an orchard today that was properly prepared and would be producing truffles within a few years.

[water running] - We actually sell out before our season even starts.

[water running] - [Narrator] Truffle growing may be slow, but the clock starts ticking once a truffle is taken out of the orchard.

Truffles lose their taste and aroma about one week after they're harvested.

Kate Dingus says that doesn't give her much time to clean and package the truffles for delivery to their clients.

- Our turnaround time is very short, so we can't get them a truffle a few days in advance because it's starting to go downhill from the day we take it out of the ground.

So we normally get the truffle out of the ground, say on Wednesday, and then Wednesday morning we clean, Wednesday afternoon we ship that out, and they get it the next morning.

And latest, I would say three, four o'clock, - [Trainer] He found about 40.

- [Narrator] Aki here can sniff out a few hundred truffles a day around the orchards Burwell Farms operates.

Back in day, farmers used pigs to do the job, but dogs won out.

- [Trainer] It was hard to get a 400 pound pig to keep it from eating the truffle.

- [Narrator] Even with science behind this process, there's no guarantee these trees will yield a quality truffle.

Again, they're notoriously difficult to grow, but thanks to Aki, finding them is not an issue.

[trainer words indistinct] [Aki barking] [trainer laughing] [man clears throat] [trainer laughing]