 Such laws established the development co-operation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, collaborating with other scientific and technical institutions, in Italy and abroad.Since 1974, Prof. Nicola Matarrese, following the plenipotentiary Minister Ernesto Mario Bolasco, gives a decisive contribution in shaping the future development of the activity of the Institute in the framework of laws already in processing and then issued as indicated above.Matarrese leaves the direction of the IAO in 1977 to devote himself to full-time teaching of Agricultural Hydraulics at the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Bari.