Giuseppe Cuboni

Giuseppe Cuboni (1852 to 1920) was an Italian botanist and agronomist, born in Modena and known for his pioneer work in plant pathology. He studied medicine and natural sciences in Rome, where the botanist Giuseppe De Notaris influenced his career, worked at the Botanical Garden of Rome from 1877 and then taught at the School of Viticulture in Conegliano, first natural sciences from 1881 to 1885 and then botany and plant pathology. From 1887 to 1920 he directed the Stazione di Patologia vegetale, the station for plant pathology, in Rome. He is remembered for research on plant diseases and their remedies, notably downy mildew and phylloxera, two scourges of grape vineyards, and for studies of the agriculture of southern Italy, where he found species and varieties of agricultural plants adaptable to the region's climate. The mycological genus Cubonia was named after him by Pier Andrea Saccardo.