The Herbarium Agrariae Pisa: a memory of agricultural research in the period 1920-1935

A collection of vascular plants, consisting of 1250 exsiccata for a total of 705 species belonging to 99 families, is preserved at the Department of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences of the University of Pisa. The description of the specimen, without images up to now, is available on the international herbarium management system JACQ (http://www.jacq.org/#home) with the acronym PIAGR-Herbarium Agrariae Pisa. The value of this small herbarium does not rely on the rarity or origin of the preserved species, or on the reputation of the collector, but on being a ‘living’ testimony of the research activities carried out in the first half of the XX century at the Royal High Institute of Agriculture of Pisa. This instituteinherited the knowledge of the first university School for Agriculture in the world, which was founded in Pisa at the behest of Cosimo Ridolfi, in 1842.