Services rendered by trees to our planet range from carbon sequestration to the production of oxygen, to the conservation of the ground and the regulation of the water cycle. Trees support both natural and human food systems and provide shelter for numberless species, humankind included, via construction materials. While all forest ecosystems are important, tropical forests are essential for the planet’s equilibrium and for the very survival of the human species. Apart from the loss of an important player in atmospheric carbon sequestration, deforestation and forest degradation in the great tropical forests cause serious environmental impact, also thanks to their effects on climate regulation.1
Since 1990, primary forest surface – now present only in tropical and boreal zones – has diminished by more than 80 million hectares and more than a third of the forest surface has been lost compared to the time before the development of human civilisation.2
Carbon sequestration is the first and most evident service offered by our global forests. But they also play an even more important role in climate stability, thanks to their releasing large quantities of water vapour into the atmosphere that, by diminishing air pressure in the lower atmosphere, facilitates the flow of moist air from the oceans. Known as the “biotic pump” and postulated first by two Russian physicists, this mechanism is capable of transporting water vapour over huge distances far from the oceans, thus guaranteeing rainfall in many inland areas.3 In South America, the River Plate basin depends on evaporation from the Amazon rainforest for 70% of its water resources, and western China, which has the largest expanses of cereal crops, depends for over 80% of its waters resources on humidity recycled from the Euro-Asiatic forests (from Scandinavia to east Russia).4
This capacity for climate regulation is guaranteed above all by the great natural or unmanaged forests that are not disturbed by human actions. To safeguard them should be an absolute top priority within the context of the progressive changes of the global climate.

— Francesco Meneguzzo, Federica Zabini

Institute of BioEconomy, CNR - Sesto Fiorentino (FI) CAI Central Scientific Committee

The nose can be considered the most external part of our brain.
In the olfactory epithelium, olfactory sensory neurons are present, whose receptors receive odorous stimuli and then transmit them directly to the cerebral cortex, without the mediation of the thalamus, as occurs for other sensorial systems.
Unlike other neurons, olfactory neurons can constantly regenerate to counteract the dangers deriving from their external position (attack from external agents such as viruses, bacteria).
Among the areas of the brain that are directly activated by olfactory neurons, some make up part of the limbic system – such as the amygdala, hippocampus and hypothalamus – and are closely linked to processing emotions and memory. This extensive olfactory network demonstrates the importance held by the sense of smell for mediating physiological and behavioural responses to emotionally stimulating events in many animals. It also explains why smell has such a rapid effect on modulating emotional responses, and why it is the most efficient of the senses to evoke memories.1-3
In 1964, the Australian researchers Isabel J. Bear and Richard G. Thomas published an article in Nature in which they used the term “petrichor” – petros (stone) and ichor (blood of the gods) – to describe the smell of rainwater on dry earth.4 The olfactory phenomenon, made possible by the atmospheric aerosol documented by the two scientists, originates from the diffusion into the air of essential oils (produced previously by plants) from fungal spores, bacteria and geosmin present in geological material.
More recently, scientists at MIT in Boston demonstrated that a greater quantity of aerosol is produced on porous rocks and when the rain falls slowly rather than quickly, since these conditions give the air trapped in the geological material more time to be vaporised into the air.5
In much less urbanised environments, such as mountains, geosmin prevails over the presence of ozone in the air and is therefore perceived more intensely. This is why that particularly earthy smell is perceived in mountains as soon as it rains. Numerous international studies are analysing the positive effects of petrichor and geosmin on the cerebral activity of human beings. Researchers at the School of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences in South Korea and at the Department of Neurology and Behaviour at Stony Brook University in New York have concluded that they are capable of generating profound emotions that calm the mind and alleviate anxiety.

— Francesco Meneguzzo, Federica Zabini

Institute of BioEconomy, CNR - Sesto Fiorentino (FI) CAI Central Scientific Committee

Every plant product that we find in various forms and recipes on our tables absorbs and re-processes valuable substances offered by nature, synthesizing them according to their specific primary or secondary metabolism: from water to minerals, from carbohydrates to fats and proteins up to the secondary metabolites, among which vitamins, polyphenols, anthrocyanins and carotenoids. These secondary metabolites, or micro-nutrients, perform vital functions both for plant health and for our organism, protecting us from oxidising agents and reinforcing our immune defences. Tartaric acid is especially abundant in grapes and tamarinds and is so representative that it has been adopted as a standard in analysing the acidity of food liquids.1
That is not all: tartaric acid is an exceedingly interesting product of grape-pomace extraction. Extraction techniques have varying degree of efficiency, depending on temperature, acidity and calcium chloride levels: in any case, significant extraction yields can be obtained, ranging from 50 and 75 grams of tartaric acid per kilogram of pomace.2
Thanks to its antioxidant (acid regulator) and preservative properties, tartaric acid is used widely in various food categories, including dairy products, edible oils and fats, meat and fish-based products, fruit and vegetables, and non-alcoholic and alcoholic drinks. In a modified form, tartaric acid is also used in bakery products, thanks to its capacity to react with sodium bicarbonate to produce carbon dioxide without requiring long, costly fermentation processes. This is why more research than ever is being carried out on more sustainable, efficient and productive pomace extraction methods, since a compound of special molecules hidden in the very hard seeds of the pressed residue can also be relinquished: oligomeric proanthocyanidins. These count among the most antioxidant molecules known in nature.3
From the rocks of the Baldo and Lessini Mountains in Italy, from the subsoil of Mediterranean hills, or even from the rocks of high-altitude mountains, where grapes are cultivated above 1000 metres, the tartaric acid path is long and complex: a spider web of life that from the inert depths of the Earth envelopes every moment of our existence.

— Francesco Meneguzzo, Federica Zabini

Institute of BioEconomy, CNR - Sesto Fiorentino (FI) CAI Central Scientific Committee