Truffles, a luxury delicacy in French and Italian cuisine, may soon be adding flavour to blander dishes, as it migrates further north amid climate change.

Ulf Buentgen, a climatologist, told AFP that a rise in average temperature observed during 20th century may be shifting the natural habitat of the delicacy about 100 kilometres north, from France and Italy to Germany.

Stanley Ho recently matched his own world record price paid for a truffle when he bought a couple white truffles for a total cost of $330,000 at a truffle auction.

The billionaire made his winning bid through representatives at the event held at his own Grand Lisboa hotel in Macau last week end.

Ho’s winning bid bought him a giant truffle from Italy’s central Tuscany region that weighed about 900 grams and a smaller one of about 400 grams.

Hong Kong’s billionaire tycoons enjoy a status close to royalty in Asia’s wealth-obsessed financial hub.

The city’s richest man Li Ka-shing has the fame of a movie star, while the court case involving the will of eccentric pig-tailed billionaire Nina Wang last year enthralled Hong Kong with its brew of sex, money and power.

But Wang’s death in 2007 and the hospitalisation last year of casino tycoon Stanley Ho were a stark reminder that some of Hong Kong’s 40 richest tycoons — synonymous with its post-war economic success — are in their twilight years.

They will leave behind eye-popping fortunes worth more than 130 billion US dollars and vast business empires that control everything from supermarkets and property development to ports and telecoms.