The (forgotten) Father of the Green Revolution.

Careful consumers prefer buying ancient and / or almost completely disappeared flours. Surely some of you  have received as a gift a gourmet basket where  a package of pasta produced from an old wheat has been found: Senatore Cappelli. Well you have found the testimony of the work of one of the greatest agrarian geneticists of all time that our country has had: Nazareno Strampelli, a man that unfortunately almost nobody knows in Italy.

Strampelli was born in Crispiero in 1866 and, graduated in Pisa in Agriculture, began at the beginning of the ‘900 to work on the genetic improvement of Italian grains, first the soft grains and then, after having met the Marquis Raffaele Cappelli, the hard grains.

When, in 1906, the Marquess Raffaele Cappelli, owner of many farms in Capitanata (Puglia), decided to use one of them for experimental cultivation, the Minister of Agriculture of that time suggested him the name of Nazareno Strampelli who accepted without hesitation the proposal of the Marquis. Strampelli’s objective was simple: to increase the production of the crops and the income per hectare yield to the farmers, developing varieties resistant to bad weather and droughts. A noble intention, considering that at that time there were not a few who suffered from hunger pangs. The first grains that the scientist spread met strong resistance, mainly because of the opposition of the seed producers. In 1906 Italy imported much of the wheat from the United States and the Soviet Union. In 1933, thanks to the results obtained from Strampelli’s work, Italy no longer imported wheat, which became self-sufficient and began to export it.

Strampelli in almost 20 years of work selected and developed more than sixty varieties of grains, giving each variety a different name: Carlotta, in honor of his wife who was also his faithful assistant, Gregorio Mendel and many others. The agronomist did not forget even the marquis, who in the meantime became  senator. Thus the “Senatore Cappelli” wheat was born, which then became one of the most widespread hard grains cultivated in Italy.

Nazareno Strampelli was one of the most important Italian experts in agricultural genetics of all time, the forerunner of the “green revolution”.

When you find a package of pasta made with durum wheat flour Senatore Cappelli, taste it remembering the work of Strampelli, a man of other times, a scientist who allowed to bring pasta on the tables of each house.