Girolamo Caruso

Girolamo Caruso (September 18, 1842, Alcamo, province of Trapani – January 2, 1923, Pisa), was an Italian agronomist and university teacher.

He was born in Alcamo and graduated in Agriculture at the university of Naples in 1861. After spending some years in the army, first as a volunteer and later as commissioner of Military engineering, in 1864 he was appointed as teacher of agriculture at the agrarian provincial school of Corleone (Palermo), and its director until 1867, when he moved to Messina to teach at the Technical Institute.

Nel 1862, aged only 20, Caruso started to deal with crop rotation, nearly unknown in that period and, the following year, with reforestation of slopes and the creation of drainage basins to collect the waters to be used as power to irrigate the fields.

In those years he devoted himself to some researches on the agriculture in Sicily (on the gommosis of citrus trees, on viticulture and vinification, on olive growing) and got a great success with his work L'industria dei cereali in Sicilia e le popolazioni che la esercitano (Palermo 1870); in this book, besides describing the agrarian techniques and machines, there were useful suggestions. Caruso recommended the system "a quinqueria" for the crop rotation (as in Sicilian manor farms), and indicated the agricultural tools available on the market.

...
Wikipedia