An 850-gram white truffle from northern Italy sold for 24,000 euros ($30,900) at the 10th Annual World Alba White Truffle Auction in Tokyo last night.

By weight, that’s 84 percent less than the $330,000 Macau casino billionaire Stanley Ho paid for a 1.5 kilogram truffle last year.

The auction, held simultaneously in Tokyo and the Italian towns of Grinzane Cavour and Merano, raised a combined 118,000 euros for various charities.

« The financial crisis has definitely had an impact, » Bruno Libralon, president of Italian Culinary Institute for Foreigners, arranger of the three auctions, said in an interview in Tokyo.

The winning bidder, Kazumasa Terada, founder and president of handbag retailer Samantha Thavasa Japan Ltd., said he will have a chef prepare half the truffle for a private dinner and give the other half to the Ritz-Carlton hotel, the auction’s Tokyo venue.

White truffles were lately listed at No. 2 by Fortune Small Business in their list of world’s priciest foods.

They are intensely aromatic and grated over dishes raw, unlike black truffles, which are generally cooked to bring out the full flavor. Source bloomberg