Italian botanist and professor of agriculture at Padua from 1763. Pietro Arduino was acting director of the Padua Botanical Garden from 1757-1760 and founded an agrarian garden at the University of Padua in 1776. A correspondent of Carl Linnaeus, he sent him various plant specimens from Italy. He was also a friend of the botanist Antonio Turra.

Arduino was born in the village of Caprino on the slopes of Monte Baldo, outside Verona. The family only had enough money to give a formal education to the eldest son, and the younger Pietro lost out. However, the environs of his youth was a wonderful classroom in itself, for it offered many interesting plants for the botanically-minded Arduino to study. Many professional botanists visited the area for its special flora, and the young Arduino was able to serve as guide to one such, named Seguier, who identified great potential in Arduino and introduced him to the then director of the Padua Botanical Garden, Giulio Pontedera. In this way Arduino obtained a position there as a gardener in 1750.

Within three years Arduino had been promoted to head gardener, and meanwhile studied botany. He earned such respect that when Pontedera died in 1757, Arduino was appointed interim director of the gardens. During this period he travelled throughout the region collecting and studying the flora, leading to his publication Animadversionum botanicarum specimen (1759). Arduino adopted many of Linnaeus' ideas at this time, though not the binomial system. His growing reputation also allowed him to enter into correspondence and exchange with many notable botanists of the time.

When an official successor to Pontedera was chosen in 1960 in the form of Giovanni Marsili, Arduino decided to seek another position rather than return to being a gardener, suggesting to the Venetian government the establishment of a chair of agriculture at Padua. Successful, he was instated as Italy's first professor of agriculture in 1765. He founded an experimental farm the following year and remained in his post until his death in 1805, giving up his floristic research and dedicating himself exclusively to agricultural studies after the move.

Arduino was a member of numerous scientific academies and associations both in Italy and abroad, and kept up a wide-ranging correspondence with botanists including Linnaeus. Arduino's son Luigi Arduino (1759-1834) was also a botanist and agriculturalist at Padua.

Sources:
J.H. Barnhart, 1965, Biographical Notes Upon Botanists, 1: 72
G. Casadoro in A. Minelli, 1995, The Botanical Garden of Padua, 1545-1995: 1757-1760
C.S. Gager, 1938, "Botanic Gardens of the World", Brooklyn Botanic Garden Record, 27: 277
C. Jarvis, 2007, Order out of Chaos: 189-191
F.A. Stafleu & R.S. Cowan, 1973, Taxonomic Literature, 2nd edition: 152.