Giacinto Donno, Magister of the past, a lesson for the future!

Giacinto Donno, Magister of the past, a lesson for the future!


Antonio Bruno *



The olive-groves Italian is estimated at 150 million trees spread over an area of more than 1 million hectares. Puglia boasts the highest number of olive farms, in fact there are more than 267mila. The efforts, creativity and sacrifice of these men and women are out more than 222mila tons of oil, nearly a ton on average for the company, which accounts for 37% of domestic production of olive oil. The percentages are the result of an average based on ISTAT and ISMEA on oil campaign from 2002 to 2008.

To do this oil does it take the water after being in contact or in the olives, becomes "The waste water of oil mills" that have always been an important environmental problem for the milling industry, which in Italy can reach the 6,000 units and represent a problem for our region because more than half of the waste water of oil mills are concentrated in Puglia.

I attend many conferences where professional agricultural entrepreneurs got excited in a whimper and poignant and passionate lamentations in which they are declared victims of the absurd rules that relate to the vegetation water has become a problem, they say, was not there before, and that is been placed, only recently, by unknown "saboteurs" of the oil sector.

It 's why I write what becomes more important because I have read with attention to a study published in 1930 by the late prof. Giacinto woman who has worked before in 'Institute of tree crops, Faculty of Agriculture of the Royal University of Naples, who directed the Institute of Arboreal Cultivation in the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Bari until the early 80's last century and that I had the honor of having as President of the Commission who supported the school leaving examination in 1976 at the now distant Agricultural Technical Institute "Giovanni loan of Lecce.

Prof. Giacinto Donno, referring to the waste water, she writes that they were also called water or sludge from hell and that they represented a real waste that can not be "with impunity" poured or in the vicinity of the town and much less in soils cultivated.

You jumped right? How can the distinguished women professors in 1930, has written in black and white that you have some, so to speak, "punitive consequences" if you pour vegetable water in the fields? Professional And all the farmers who say the vegetable water of oil mills do not represent any problem, perhaps from a landed spacecraft from some remote planet in the universe where things are so different?

But we continue reading the note in 1930 by prof. Giacinto woman who writes of the attempt of Professor. Richard Ciusa University of Bari to use the waste, so it defines the prof. Donno, for its sugar content that could give the 3% alcohol. In the same note I read that the prof. Ciusa calculated that the amount of water in vegetation was 5milioni quintals from which you could get 150 thousand liters of alcohol for use as fuel. In short, the proposal was to use the waste water vegetation of oil mills to extract the alcohol that was to serve as fuel.

The Professor. Women who've read starts from the question of whether to get this taken from the sludge alcohol was economically viable.

And the question arose because in a calculation made in 1929 by the Engineering Department of Finance Bari had taken into account only the cost of transporting the waste water of oil mills as the only expenses that should have been to get support from the sludge 'alcohol.

Prof. Donno challenges primarily because this calculation did not include the presence of containers that contain those waters which were then fermented. Citing Professor. Blacks in Bologna, which had identified the vegetation water of Saccharomyces, prof. She recalls that the fermentation can be achieved by having a minimum required temperature is 18 ° C.

Since the pressing of olives takes place in winter, the prof. Donno notes that for the fermentation process called for by prof. Ciusa there is the need for a sufficient number of containers but that they would be suitable for fermentation to occur.

Prof. Donna has done more, tried to put into practice what was stated by Prof. Ciusa of Bari in 1929 observing the waste water from an oil press Corigliano d'Otranto Salento Lecce left to rest in a well repaired.

The observation of Professor Donno began December 17, 1929 and ran for 19 days until 8 January 1930. In these days except for the first two, the temperature never reached the necessary minimum of 18 ° C for fermentation.

Then the prof. Donna has taken in February of 1930 samples to be analyzed with the balance of distilling Westphal 200 cm cubes and Varant getting an alcohol content from 0.20% to 0.91% and a sugar content by 3.56% to 4.76 %.

Prof. Donno notes that the fermentation process was not done in view of the fact that, if it had occurred normally, you could have obtained a quantity of alcohol in relation to the quantity of sugar through a fermentation process, as is known, is completed in a or two days.

But just as in the case of wine poor in sugar, for this refusal is the alcohol may be obtained from the attached forms of bacteria and oxidized very easily in acetic acid.

That fact, according to the prof. Donno, does blur the hope of obtaining by this rejection in the ACOL prof. Ciusa writes without charge such that the limits of cost-effectiveness that it has undertaken.

I do not spreads on other considerations made in that note from the prof. Donno, but it's really exciting that our countryman, who was born and raised in Novoli del Salento Lecce, which was first held at the University of Naples and then continued to do research in the Faculty of Agriculture of Bari, through observation and attempt to reproduce a process that announces the results, has prevented the blunder of easy money, investment inform farmers Professional 1930.

We hope that farmers professionalism of our day who have had the good fortune to read these words, understand this!

We hope that you know the training of Doctors of Agronomy and Doctors of Forestry is directed to do so to prevent that belief, word of mouth and as easy as improbable inferences or insights of unspecified "experts on the subject" or better Solons that "I I do it all alone I know that I have more practical than you that you have studied "do get the result of the failure by squandering the savings of those who take in food production.



* Agronomist (expert in urban and regional diagnostic entitled International University Master's Degree in Diagnostic IMD Urban and Regional Urban and Territorial Diagnostics).





Bibliography



Giacinto Donno, Observations and considerations on the flora of the olive vegetation water. Portici 1930

E. De Bellis, distilling dregs and the problem of domestic fuel. Bari 1929

R. Ciusa, D. Massimeo, A. Mangini, On the use of vegetation water from olives. Zymologica journal, Chemistry of Colloids and sugar. Vol IV No Bologna 1 to 2 Year 1929

R. Ciusa, D. Massimeo, A. Mangini, alcohol oil. Propaganda Agricola Bari N. 9-1929

Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno Year 1929-24 February, and March 15, 2 - 22 - May 30-June