Fernando López Tuero
(1857–1907) was an agricultural scientist and
agronomist
An agriculturist, agriculturalist, agrologist, or agronomist (abbreviated as agr.), is a professional in the science, practice, and management of agriculture and agribusiness. It is a regulated profession in Canada, India, the Philippines, the ...
who discovered the bug (believed at first to be a germ) which was destroying
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, link=yes, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit=Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), is a Caribbean island and unincorporated ...
sugar cane
Sugarcane or sugar cane is a species of (often hybrid) tall, perennial grass (in the genus '' Saccharum'', tribe Andropogoneae) that is used for sugar production. The plants are 2–6 m (6–20 ft) tall with stout, jointed, fibrous stalk ...
s.
Agricultural epidemic
In the latter part of the 19th Century, an epidemic was affecting the agricultural industry of Puerto Rico. Among the crops affected was the sugar cane, whose main product "sugar" was vital to Puerto Rico's economy.
The
Spanish colonial government created an emergency commission composed of scientists, which included Dr.
Agustín Stahl
Dr. Agustín Stahl (January 21, 1842 – July 12, 1917) was a Puerto Rican medical doctor and scientist with diverse interests in the fields of ethnology, botany, and zoology. He advocated Puerto Rico's independence from Spain.
Early years
...
and Fernando López Tuero, to study the situation. Stahl concluded that the epidemic was caused by a "germ" in the terrain, however his findings were inconclusive. In 1894 Fernando López Tuero, the director and head agronomist of the Agronomical Station of
Río Piedras
Rio or Río is the Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Maltese word for "river". When spoken on its own, the word often means Rio de Janeiro, a major city in Brazil.
Rio or Río may also refer to:
Geography Brazil
* Rio de Janeiro
* Rio do Sul, a ...
, discovered that the cause of the epidemic was the
white grub
The family Scarabaeidae, as currently defined, consists of over 30,000 species of beetles worldwide; they are often called scarabs or scarab beetles. The classification of this family has undergone significant change in recent years. Several sub ...
(
Phyllophaga
''Phyllophaga'' is a very large genus (more than 900 species) of New World scarab beetles in the subfamily Melolonthinae. Common names for this genus and many other related genera in the subfamily Melolonthinae are May beetles, June bugs, and Jul ...
).
The Phyllophaga is a very large
genus
Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...
(more than 260 species) of
New World
The term ''New World'' is often used to mean the majority of Earth's Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: Oxford University Press, p. ...
scarab beetle
Beetles are insects that form the order Coleoptera (), in the superorder Endopterygota. Their front pair of wings are hardened into wing-cases, elytra, distinguishing them from most other insects. The Coleoptera, with about 400,000 describ ...
s in the subfamily
Melolonthinae
Melolonthinae is a subfamily of the scarab beetles (family Scarabaeidae). It is a very diverse group; distributed over most of the world, it contains over 11,000 species in over 750 genera. Some authors include the scarab subfamilies Euchirina ...
. These beetles are nocturnal, emerging in great numbers during the night. The adults are
chafer
Chafer may refer to:
* Chafer beetle, the common name for several species of scarab beetles
* Chafing dish, a food warming dish
People with the name
* Adrian Chafer (born 1991), Spanish musician
* Daniel Alberto Chafer (born 1981), Argentine ...
s, feeding on foliage of trees and shrubs. They may cause significant damage when emerging in large numbers. The larvae (called white grubs) feed on the roots of grasses and other plants.
López Tuero's scientific investigations have been included in Madre Teresa Cortés Zavala's "Fernando López Tuero, La Revista de Agricultura, Industria y Comercio de Puerto Rico y el progreso agrícola de 1885-1898" written for the Escuela de Historia; Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo.
Written works
López Tuero voiced strong beliefs about the function of a state, saying it was mainly to protect people's private property. His views were drafted into the 1878 Municipal Law which organized many of the police functions around just that, protect the large farms of landowners in the countryside.
Some of his works include:
Written works
/ref>
*''Imagen del editor Unitarismo De La Patria Espanola: La Descentralizacion, El Regionalismo, Portugal, Gibraltar, Sintesis Del Unitarismo'' ()
*''Valoración de materias agrícolas''
*''El chacolí santanderino en los siglos XIII al XIX''
*''El hombre''
*''Enfermedad de la caña de azúcar y modo de combartirla''
*''Estado moral de los factores de la producción en Cuba y Puerto Rico''
*''Café y piña de America''
See also
* List of Puerto Ricans
*Puerto Rican scientists and inventors
Before Christopher Columbus and the Spanish Conquistadors landed on the island of "Borikén" (Puerto Rico), the Tainos who inhabited the island depended on their astronomical observations for the cultivation of their crops.
In 1581, Jua ...
Notes
References
Further reading
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lopez Tuero, Fernando
1857 births
1907 deaths
Puerto Rican scientists
Spanish agronomists
People from Colonial Puerto Rico