News

Chestnuts in Italy: The trend reversed, it is now possible to grow

Chestnut Kernel
Italy
Published Nov 19, 2021

Tridge summary

There was a time, not too far away (a century ago), when Italy was a world leader in the production of chestnuts. Today, the Belpaese occupies only the fourth place in this special ranking (source: Fao), but there are still excellent prospects for making a modern chestnut cultivation. This, in a nutshell, is one of the themes that emerged during the online meeting dedicated to chestnuts within the review "Archiginnasio Wednesdays. The Odyssey of food from field to table ", organized by the National Academy of Agriculture, Bolognese delegations of the Italian Academy of Cuisine and the Medical and Surgical Society of Bologna.

Original content

"Bread tree", the first was Xenophon. Renzo Panzacchi, president of the Consorzio Castanicoltori Appennino Bolognese, took stock of the situation on chestnuts from prehistoric times to today, who in his detailed report also dispelled a false myth. The expression that wants the chestnut as "bread tree", so dear to the older generations, was not coined by the Italian popular tradition, but boasts the imprimatur of an illustrious author: the definition dates back to Xenophon, a Greek historian who lived between the fifth and fourth centuries BC, who in this way wanted to tell about the fruit of a tree capable of effectively solving the problem of bread for the Greek populations who lived in difficult hilly or mountainous areas, where the cultivation of wheat or of other cereals was very difficult. Chestnut growing in the world Curiosity aside, Panzacchi in his report also highlighted that today China holds the leadership of production worldwide, with almost 2 million tons per year, 4 ...
Source: Myfruit
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