Raffaele Ciferri


Raffaele Ciferri was an Italian botanist, agriculturalist and mycologist.
He studied agricultural sciences at the University of Bologna. From 1925 to 1932, he was based in the Dominican Republic, where he helped establish an experimental agricultural station in Santiago de los Caballeros for studies of cassava. While in Latin America, he also conducted research of diseases affecting cacao in Ecuador. In 1934–35 he was stationed in Italian Somaliland, performing organizational work involving agrarian services.
In 1936 he was appointed professor of botany to the faculty of agriculture in Florence, and from 1942 onward, served as a professor of botany at the University of Pavia.
A prolific writer, he was the author of well over a 1000 published works on subjects that included mycology, plant pathology and physiology, microbiology, virology, lichenology, the systematics of cultivated plants, agronomy, and the history of botany. Species that contain the epithet of ciferrii are named in his honor.

Selected works