For more than 500 years, people have been trying to cultivate truffles, to domesticate them. Nobody yet knows exactly how the fruiting bodies arise from the "mycorrhiza", the symbiosis of the fungal network in the soil with the roots of oaks and other tree species. People tried the direct culture method and buried pieces of truffles with the fungal spores they contained in the soil. Then followed the indirect method by sowing acorns collected under truffle trees.

Since the 1970s, hundreds of thousands of tree seedlings have been grown every year, whose roots have been "infected" with truffle spores, so that the symbiosis of fungus and tree begins, the so-called mycorriza. The trees planted, however, produced only moderate yields and sometimes none at all.

Now, since the 2000s, the method has been supplemented by so-called truffle traps or truffle nests: holes about 40 cm deep which are dug in the root zone of the planted trees, which are filled with limed compost mixed with a few grams of truffle pieces. The indirect and direct methods are combined. The truffles grow better and faster in the truffle nests than in the surrounding soil. In addition, more and more truffle cultures are irrigated to compensate for the consequences of climate change.