Luigi Fenaroli

Who is Luigi Fenaroli?

Luigi Fenaroli was an Italian botanist and agronomist.

Luigi Fenaroli graduated in agriculture at the Higher School of Agronomy at the University of Milan in 1921. He performed several naturalistic expeditions, on behalf of the Reale società geografica italiana. In 1930 he was in Angola and spent 1932 and 1933 in the Brazilian Amazon.

In 1933 he was appointed vice-director of the Stazione sperimentale di selvicoltura in Florence. In 1943 he moved to the Istituto sperimentale di pioppicoltura in Casale Monferrato in Piedmont. In 1946 he became director of the "Maize experimental station", established by eminent agronomist Tito Vezio Zapparoli. There he directed the Hybrid Maize Program, designing, from 1948 to 1953, the experimental field tests plan for the trials of the American hybrids introduced to Italy after the Second World War. He shaped the program for the collection of seed accessions of traditional Italian varieties of maize during 1954 and 1955, and sponsored the program selection of inbred lines, fixed from such varieties and their combinations with American lines, under the coordination of his pupil and friend Aureliano Brandolini. From 1968 to 1974 he directed the newly established Istituto sperimentale di assestamento forestale e alpicoltura in Trento.