Armando Maugini

Who was Armando Maugini?

Armando Maugini was an Italian agronomist and tropicalist. Maugini shaped and directed the activities of the Istituto agricolo coloniale italiano, presently the Istituto agronomico per l'oltremare in Florence for forty years.

After several years of agronomic field trials and extension in Libya and laboratory research in Florence, he was appointed director of the Istituto agricolo coloniale italiano in 1924. He worked there through the era of Italian colonial expansion, the Second World War, and the reshaping of the institute to its current form in 1953 holding the position of director until 1964, when his collaborator and friend Ferdinando Bigi was appointed as new director until 1968.

He ran the magazine L'agricoltura coloniale, later known as Rivista di agricoltura tropicale e subtropicale, and published several books and hundreds of articles on the topics dealt with by his institute. He enhanced staff technical skills and material endowments and established a net of collaborations with professionals and institutions worldwide.