“Pyrgy” EU project: a website for the divulgation of knowledge of Ligurian medicinal plants and masterpieces.

The dissemination of result is a crucial point in the development of one research project. In many cases for some specific parts also the diffusion of layman presentation results toward the general public is also within the objects of the horizontal activities of a project and the most suitable tool for this dissemination activity is the web site1. This is also the case of the PYRGI project, whose aim is the development of niche sectors of the rural and agro economy of the Northern Mediterranean through1. The multifunctional development of spontaneous and cultivated plants of Mediterranean environment, or plants which have been naturalized in it2. The strengthening of the economic chain that starts with the producer and ends with the consumer through transformation, promotion and marketing of the identified and obtained products2. Within the dissemination activities of the PYRGI project there is the aim to have a deep review of the ancient pharmaceutical and ethonobotanical knowledge of the Liguria region and to make all the population aware of this work by a specific web site. The specificity of this web site is that the consortium wants to share knowledge in many different but linked fields: ancient recipes, medical plants, related art masterpieces. Specifically, the hyperlink properties of the web site should make the user to navigate among reconstructions of ancient recipes (also with the original images taken from old books collecting these recipes). Within the presentation form of each recipe the related medical plants are listed through hyperlink, that bring the user to specific forms containing all the botanical information of a particular plant family, genus or species, the actual use, the habitat and the treatment of the species and many other information. As in Genova there is an important collection of ancient pharmaceutical vases and tools, a specific section of the website is devoted to the presentation of these pieces with specific presentation forms also linked to the plant and to the recipe pages. The backbone of this website is an ad hoc designed relational database with specific table for all the three main sections of the web site. Particular attention has been paid to use, whenever possible, categorized fields with fix set of terms suggested by expert taken from mainly standardized vocabularies. A protected section of the website allows authenticated and authorized users to insert and update the public information.