Ruggero Rossi and his wife Annamaria Carrea, agronomists, they decided to become basil growers almost thirty years ago, precisely in the year of the "Colombiadi", 500 years after the discovery of Christopher Columbus, coincidence that makes this Genoese tradition that they carry on even more suggestive. Years later they build in Pra ', the district of Genoa undoubtedly the most typical for the cultivation of PDO basil, their wonderful terrace greenhouses. Ruggero tells us that in this country, now it has become a western district of the city, it was brought from the east by navigators a thousand years ago, the first basil plant, then used only for medicinal purposes. The combination wanted in preparing one of these recipes, some basil leaves were ground in a mortar together with garlic and extra virgin olive oil, unintentionally starting one of the most beautiful gastronomic stories of Italian cuisine: "Pesto alla Genovese ", which is now, after the tomato, the most used condiment in the world. All the farmers in Pra 'have been growing basil in summer and winter for hundreds of years according to a very particular method. In these small greenhouses obtained from terracing on the promontory, the plants are harvested by hand, remaining balanced on wooden boards so as not to trample the ground, and seedling after seedling are each harvested with its root, as soon as they reach a height of about 15 cm, thus preserving the fundamental characteristic of the small and tender leaf. The pride of Ruggero and Annamaria in addition to the preservation and cultivation of this precious and delicate plant, is to adopt agricultural criteria and technologies to eliminate the use of chemicals, such as soil sterilization with steam at 160 °, adding also the genuineness as a fundamental characteristic of this crop.