Abstract
Birds' truffles; Picoa spp. have been the topic of few reviews, they are considered between desert truffles which are a valuable food and used as medicine in Arabian Gulf countries including Saudi Arabia and several other countries of the world. Recently, many researchers have demonstrated that desert truffles including bird's truffles are source of important nutritional elements. Also, present biological activities such as antibacterial and antioxidant activities, have a kind of medicinal properties and used in folk medicine. Meanwhile, birds' truffles were not investigated for its "cultivation", ecology, taxonomy, physiology, edibility, medicinal properties as well as antimicrobial activities. Rare studies of bird truffles, could be found in literatures, concerning geographic distribution and molecular studies which were achieved to elucidate the ambiguity of the classification of bird's truffles; this with the help of the advanced recent techniques in molecular biology. In this present article, we compile recent data on the importance of Picoa spp. as desert truffles fungi. The Picoa can play a significant role in biological control agents, provide food for birds, decomposition of the fruit-bodies of Picoa in the soils can improve the physical, chemical and biological conditions of the soils that will improve their ecological conditions.