In order to protect such a fragile resource and to spread the soil culture, the Center for Agriculture and Environment Research (CREA) inaugurated yesterday in Fagna, in the province of Florence, the first “pedoteca” in Italy, a real archive of soil samples. The archive has few equals in the world: there are four others in Europe, but that of the CREA can boast the maximum quantity of preserved samples. To date, 32,612 soil samples from all over Italy are kept, but this number is constantly growing, thanks to the projects of CREA researchers and other research bodies that collaborate with them, adding another thousand samples from one of the first soil studies conducted between the 1930s and the early 1950s. It is a unique scientific heritage, which will provide important answers on the agronomic management of the second half of the twentieth century and which will attract many qualified Italian and foreign researchers.
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