Sears Holding Co. announced Thursday it will close 18 Sears stores and 45 Kmart locations -- including the Kmart on Virginia Avenue in Tifton. 

The announcement comes after a brutal year for Sears,  which closed hundreds of Sears and Kmart locations in the past 12 months.

This Sunday, Nov. 5, has been declared as Retired Educators Day in Georgia by Gov. Nathan Deal.

There are more than 121,000 retired educators in Georgia who donate thousands of hours of volunteer service and make countless contributions to the welfare of their communities across the state.

And this is after having  devoted years of their time, energies and talents to public education, motivating and inspiring students to become responsible and productive citizens.

So, thank a retired educator. They are among those who helped create our community's present and its future.

University of Georgia plant pathologist Tim Brenneman has studied the viability of truffles in the state's pecan orchards for years. This winter, he will advance his research by introducing the European variety of truffles to Georgia pecan trees.

"With collaborative researchers in Florida and Michigan, we are trying new ways of introducing the fungus to young trees so that all trees have truffles instead of just some

	Pecan Truffles

of the trees in an orchard," Brenneman said.

Pecan truffles are expensive, and their incorporation into a pecan orchard represents potential monetary gains for growers, he said.  Native pecan truffles can sell for $200 to $300 per pound in local markets. They are more economically priced than European truffles. Truffles and truffle-related dishes are growing in popularity among chefs.

"We're just trying to make these native truffles more well-known," said Brenneman, who conducts his truffle research at the Ponder farm on the UGA Tifton campus. "We also have to find a way to produce them more consistently. Pecans can host the high-value European truffles. If pecan farmers can grow those, then returns from an orchard would be much greater than just the value of pecans alone."

Four to five years, or more, may elapse before Brenneman sees results from his introduction of truffles to Georgia pecan trees. He discovered pecan truffles in Georgia in the late 1980s and has since been searching for ways to consistently produce them.

The color -- various shades of yellow and brown -- and seeming invisibility of truffles makes them difficult to harvest. They grow beneath the soil on the roots of pecan trees. Growers often don't know they have truffles until they dig them up or accidentally find them during harvest. If they do know they have truffles, they might employ a truffle-sniffing dog to find the mature truffles, which exude a very strong, earthy aroma.