The Italus hortus: on the importance of horticultural societies in Italy in the last two centuries

Extending over 2 million ha, including olive trees and vines, Italian fruit arboriculture is among the oldest and most multiform on the entire planet. The depth of its historical roots and the complexity that have characterized its history from a political, social, anthropological, and cultural perspective have shaped the structure of Italian fruit growing over time, still evident in many small, familiar farms. This evolution becomes evident from the widespread diffusion of PDO and PGI-certified productions. Italian fruit growing is, in fact, the result of the political stability and guarantee of private property that go back to Roman civilization. Such an attitude has spanned the centuries, not to mention the millennia, with the centuriation and the hortuli of the patrician Roman villas describing the pomari and the Orangeries of the Renaissance, the monastic gardens, the Emilia-Romagna broli, and the Mediterranean gardens, sites of multicropping agriculture in which work and leisure live together . Modern horticulture, based on scientific knowledge and methods, dates back to the early decades of the 19th century and was boosted after the Second World War thanks to a new generation of horticultural scientists responsible, in different Universities and research centers, for the establishment of the modern basis of horticultural science in Italy and worldwide