Search results for "Arboricoltura"
showing 10 items of 857 documents
Are Cover Crops Affecting the Quality and Sustainability of Fruit Production?
2021
The study of the interaction between fruit trees and cover crops has been addressed in numerous works over the last 50 years or more, evidencing the need to evolve from a productive orchard to an orchard that plays different ecosystem roles in terms of environmental sustainability rather than just productivity. This review, through an analysis of the scientific literature since the 1950s, highlights the development of sustainable soil management models in fruit tree orchards, mostly considering the relationship with fruit quality traits and with the ecosystem services that result from the adoption of cover crops, aiming at identifying and formulating technical recommendations in perennial o…
Determination of Evapotranspiration and Crop Coefficient of Cactus Pear (Opuntia ficus-indica Mill.) with an Energy Balance Technique
2013
A micrometeorological approach based on surface renewal technique was adopted to estimate evapotranspiration fluxes and crop coefficient data from an irrigated cactus pear (Opuntia ficus-indica Mill.) orchard under Mediterranean climatic conditions. High-frequency temperature readings were taken above the canopy top in order to get surface renewal sensible heat flux values (HSR). These values were compared against eddy covariance sensible heat fluxes (HEC) for calibration. Latent heat flux (or evapotranspiration, ET) was obtained as the residual of the energy balance equation using HSR. In field measurements of biophysical crop features, physiological characteristic and soil hydraulic compo…
Gametic embryogenesis and haploid technology as valuable support to plant breeding
2011
Plant breeding is focused on continuously increasing crop production to meet the needs of an ever-growing world population, improving food quality to ensure a long and healthy life and address the problems of global warming and environment pollution, together with the challenges of developing novel sources of biofuels. The breeders' search for novel genetic combinations, with which to select plants with improved traits to satisfy both farmers and consumers, is endless. About half of the dramatic increase in crop yield obtained in the second half of the last century has been achieved thanks to the results of genetic improvement, while the residual advance has been due to the enhanced managem…
PREDICTION OF HARVEST TIME IN PEACH [PRUNUS PERSICA (L.) BATSCH] FRUIT USING THE DA-METER
2015
The aim of this work was to define the most appropriate time of harvesting early ripening peach fruit using destructive and non-destructive quality indexes such as the index of absorbance (IAD), measured with the DA-Meter, a portable equipment able to measure the degradation of chlorophyll in the pericarp. In this context our research was carried out in 2009 and 2010 on several peach cultivars. Total soluble solid content increased while flesh firmness and total acidity decreased with IAD values, but no significant correlation was found between destructive and non-destructive parameters.
Climatic Characterization and Phenology of Local Peach Genotypes in the Udzungwa Uplands of Tanzania
2014
The phenology of two local peach genotypes was studied to verify whether peaches can be produced in the Tanzanian uplands. Observations were conducted on trees of one early- and one late-ripening peach genotype in 2010 and 2011. Temperature trends were reconstructed and three chilling estimation models were tested. The two peach genotypes differed for timing of flower and leaf bud-break. Common symptoms of insufficient chilling (presence of numerous stages at a specific date and about 20% of undeveloped flower buds) were observed in the late genotype. Both Utah and Dynamic models indicated low chilling accumulation, lower than the Mean Temperature model in most cases. This is inconsistent w…
Cactus pear (O. ficus-indica (L.) Mill.) fruit production: Ecophysiology, orchard and fresh-cut fruit management
2015
Cactus pear (Opuntia ficus-indica L. Mill.) is cultivated in wide range of environments with the consequence of large differences in crop potential, orchard systems and management. These differences may be related to temperature and rainfall range (water availability) but also to the day/night length and, of course, to soil characteristics. This leads to considerable variability in the field and in fruit quality. Crop value much depends in crop variability in terms of fruit size, which is the major factor for fruit price in Europe. The increase of crop value very much depends on regular cultural practices such as irrigation and fruit thinning, but it is also dependent on plant crop yield an…
The impact of winter flooding with saline water on foliar carbon uptake and the volatile fraction of leaves and fruits of lemon (Citrus limon) trees
2012
We investigated the consequences of recurrent winter flooding with saline water on a lemon (Citrus × limon (L.) Burm.f.) orchard, focussing on photosynthesis limitations and emission of secondary metabolites (isoprenoids) from leaves and fruits. Measurements were carried out immediately after flooding (December), at the end of winter (April) and after a dry summer in which plants were irrigated with optimal quality water (September). Photosynthesis was negatively affected by flooding. The effect was still visible at the end of winter, whereas the photosynthetic rate was fully recovered after summer, indicating an unexpected resilience capacity of flooded plants. Photosynthesis inhibition by…
Production of Haploid and Doubled Haploid Lines in Nut Crops: Persian Walnut, Almond, and Hazelnut
2021
This chapter deals with induction of haploidy via parthenogenesis in Persian walnut and via microspore embryogenesis in almond and hazelnut. Haploid induction through in situ parthenogenesis using pollination with irradiated pollen to stimulate the embryogenic development of the egg cell, followed by in vitro culture of the immature haploid embryos. Microspore embryogenesis allows the induction of immature pollen grains (microspores), to move away from the normal gametophytic developmental route in the direction of the sporophytic one, yielding homozygous organisms (embryos in this case). Unlike other fruit crops (such as Citrus), regeneration of entire plants has not yet been obtained in o…
Microspore Culture in eleven Cultivars of Loquat
2015
In plant breeding, microspore embryogenesis via isolated microspore culture is increasing as a method to obtain in a single-step doubled haploids and homozygosity. In this study, isolated microspore culture of eleven cultivars of loquat (Eriobotrya japonica (Thunb.) Lindl.) has been carried out. An analysis of anthers from different flower bud sizes, has been carried out, to identify and to select the flower bud size with anthers containing the highest quantity of vacuolated microspores. After a pre-treatment of the panicles at 4°C in dark for 4 days, flower buds were sterilized and microspores were isolated and cultured in two different media (P and MB). Moreover, only the isolated microsp…
Sustainability evaluation of Sicily's lemon and orange production: An energy, economic and environmental analysis
2013
The island of Sicily has a long standing tradition in citrus growing. We evaluated the sustainability of orange and lemon orchards, under organic and conventional farming, using an energy, environmental and economic analysis of the whole production cycle by using a life cycle assessment approach. These orchard systems differ only in terms of a few of the inputs used and the duration of the various agricultural operations. The quantity of energy consumption in the production cycle was calculated by multiplying the quantity of inputs used by the energy conversion factors drawn from the literature. The production costs were calculated considering all internal costs, including equipment, materi…