Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism

After obtaining the uniform first generation (F1) of the hybrid, Strampelli or his wife sowed the seeds of each different spike of the second generation (F2) in small plots separated by rows of rye, which worked as filters to avoid any cross-pollination. The steps were repeated until a homozygotic individual was identified with the help of Strampelli’s table of antagonist characters. If a plant presented all the recessive characters, Strampelli knew he had stumbled onto a homozygote constituting a fixed type. In the case of dominant characters, only after three or more generations of no disjunctions was the breeder in a position to conclude that he was in the presence of a homozygote. Homozygotic individuals were separated and placed in a larger plot to confirm the fixity of the type and to produce enough seeds to be used in cultivation trials. In these trials the several fixed types (the pure lines) were tested for productivity, resistance to diseases, duration of vegetative cycle, and other properties. If after several years of cultivation trials (in some cases, more than a decade) the new type confirmed its good behavior, it would earn the status of an elite race (raza elette) and would be transferred to the first multiplication fields. This was not the end of the process, for seeds were still to be sent to each of the local experiment stations responsible for confirming a strain’s adaptability in each specific region of Italy and finally for distributing the strain to local farmers.[37] Each successive step, each experimentation at a larger scale, enhanced the stability of a strain’s properties, guaranteeing that it would behave in widely dispersed fields just as it did in the controlled space of the Rieti Experiment Station.

^{Figure 1.5 Strampelli’s hybridization greenhouse, 1932.}

^{(Strampelli, “I Miei Lavori,” p. 55)}

The procedure described above demanded increasing amounts of land, and Mendelian hybridization was not inexpensive. Indeed, much of the official account of Strampelli’s institutional history is a narrative of the acquisition of land through close connections with the government.[38] It starts with rented plots and collaboration with local farmers, followed by the building in 1912 of the facilities of the Rieti Experiment Station and the purchase of 15 hectares for an experimental field. The Experiment Station then purchased two other fields, one in the southern province of Foggia, in the Tavoliere, and the other in Leonessa, 1,000 meters above sea level, for cereal cultivation in mountain areas. In 1919 the station would earn national status, would be renamed the National Institute of Genetics for Grain Cultivation, and would move to Rome. Nevertheless, Rieti would keep its status as the main place of experimentation. In 1924 an additional 200 hectares were bought in the Rieti plain in order to provide the Institute with its own multiplication fields. The Institute was now producing selected seeds to be sold to farmers instead of relying on private companies for multiplication and distribution. This involved further acquisitions of land in Apulia, in Sicily, and in Agro Romano. At the end of the 1920s, Strampelli’s National Institute of Genetics was thus in possession of a set of fields that modeled the landscape of the three main regions of Italy (northern, central, and southern) as well as its mountains and the island of Sicily.

The continuing obsession with land acquisition shows that local environmental conditions were of major importance in the alleged “space of flows” of geneticists’ pure lines.[39] That conclusion is no surprise for anyone aware of the many difficulties involved in putting things into circulation. Even pure lines do not circulate automatically. From the small hybridization laboratory in Rieti, where Strampelli and his wife hybridized plants in pots, to the southern large estates of Apulia, there is a change of scale to be overcome by successive steps. The pure lines of wheat coming out of Rieti had no immediate practical value in the conditions of arid Apulia. Each experimental field was the place of a scale work, guaranteeing that the pure line traveled smoothly through different scales and conserved all its distinctive properties.

The Seeds of Victory