Biological Institute (São Paulo)

The Biological Institute (Portuguese: Instituto Biológico) is an applied research center established in 1924 in São Paulo, Brazil.

A report was delivered to the Secretary of Agriculture, and the actual research started in the same year with Arthur Neiva, Adalberto Queiros Teles and Edmundo Navarro, who worked in two chemistry and entomology laboratories.

The academic studies in process were widely advertised among more than 1,300 coffee farms, or about 50 million farmers overall, in order to apply the results of the ongoing research.

The catastrophic uprising of the coffee borer beetle, which caught both farmers and the government short and unprepared, and the subsequent fast control of the bug founded on scientific research have shown politicians that it was impossible to protect agriculture from parasites and diseases without a permanent fitosanitary organisation, based on active research and specialised technicians and scientists.

In 1928, an area of 239,000 square metres near Ibirapuera Park, known as "Campo do Barreto", was donated to the Institute for the construction of its research centre.