Search results for "Cropping"
showing 10 items of 150 documents
Cultivation of wild medicinal species: opportunities and constraints.
2008
In medicinal plants (MPs), the transition from “discovery” to “cultivation” stage involves a decreasing recourse to their collection from the wild, accompanied by an increasing interest in their suitability into agricultural or silvicoltural cropping systems. Collecting from the wild, although is surely the oldest method for obtaining MPs, allows to satisfy very limited needs and is hardly suitable to an industrial use, because: 1) gathering from the wild does not guarantee the quantitative and qualitative uniformity that nowadays are well defined requirements of the consumers. Spontaneous yields are difficult to quantify and sometimes may be overestimated, above all when random and unfores…
Long‐Term Durum Wheat‐Based Cropping Systems Result in the Rapid Saturation of Soil Carbon in the Mediterranean Semi‐arid Environment
2016
Climate, soil physical–chemical characteristics, land management, and carbon (C) input from crop residues greatly affect soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration. According to the concept of SOC saturation, the ability of SOC to increase with C input decreases as SOC increases and approaches a SOC saturation level. In a 12-year experiment, six semi-arid cropping systems characterized by different rates of C input to soil were compared for ability to sequester SOC, SOC saturation level, and the time necessary to reach the SOC saturation level. SOC stocks, soil aggregate sizes, and C inputs were measured in durum wheat monocropping with (Ws) and without (W) return of aboveground residue to the…
Soil carbon dynamics as affected by long-term contrasting cropping systems and tillages under semiarid Mediterranean climate
2014
Abstract In a dryland Mediterranean agrosystem (Sicily, Italy) a comparative study was carried out among two crop systems (wheat/wheat and wheat/bean) after 19 years under three most used tillage managements (conventional, dual layer and no-tillage), in order to ascertain the effects of those experimental factors, single and combined, on various soil organic C pools (total and extractable organic C, microbial biomass C, basal respiration). Field CO 2 fluxes from soil, throughout a year, were also determined. Moreover, C input and output were assessed, as well as microbial and metabolic quotients. Tillage management more than cropping system affected the soil organic C stored in the first 15…
Effect of Sowing Time on Coriander Performance in a Semiarid Mediterranean Environment
2006
In semiarid environments, time of sowing is one of the most important factors influencing seed yields. For coriander (Coriandrum sativum L.), the most commonly recommended cropping technique is spring sowing (March–April), since the optimum soil temperature for seed germination ranges between 20 and 23 °C, and the crop shows a remarkable sensitivity to frost and cold. In many semiarid areas of southern Italy, however, the occurrence of prolonged dry periods in summer and spring does not allow for the scheduling of summer crops without irrigation. However, the generally mild winter temperatures and the typical rainfall distribution, which is mostly concentrated over the winter months, could …
The scent of Mare Nostrum : medicinal and aromatic plants in Mediterranean soils
2012
In the Mediterranean area, the simultaneous occurrence of pedological, climatic and economic constraints often sets a limit on the profitability of agriculture, and farmers are forced to grow a reduced number of species, dealing with a secure—albeit low—market income. The introduction of medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs) inside the current farming systems could represent a useful means to meet the multifunctional role of agriculture: producing safe food, in respect of the environment, and contributing to the development of rural areas. The study of the relationships between MAPs and the soils in which they may be grown may have two approaches: (1) the evaluation of yield and qualitative …
MAPs in Sicily: cultivation, uses, and potentiality
2013
In Sicily, MAPs have been used and cultivated for centuries, with many uses ranging from the preparation of fresh or stored food items, flavoring of foods and beverages, home-made human or animal therapy or even aesthetical purposes. Many of them grow spontaneously into such areas, and are claimed to play a significant role inside land biodiversity. The widespread belief that only under “natural” conditions MAPs find their optimum quality features has driven in many cases to their uncontrolled collection from the wild, and as a result many of them are nowadays at a risk of extinction. The field cropping of such spontaneous species could play an important role in safeguarding biodiversity, a…
Analysing and modelling the effect of nitrogen competition in weed regulation.
2020
Reducing the use of herbicide and mineral fertilizers is crucial to develop sustainable cropping systems. Such changes might result in an increased weed flora as well as intensify competition for resources, particularly nitrogen, between crops and weeds. The aim of this thesis was to analyze and model (via the mechanistic crop model FLORSYS) the key processes underlying nitrogen competition, in order to determine if changes in nitrogen fertilization techniques and cultivar choice could promote biological weed regulation.At the beginning of the thesis, the FLORSYS model (which simulates the effects of cropping systems in interaction with pedoclimate on weed dynamics) only included light comp…
Toward an Integrated System for Surveillance and Behaviour Analysis of Groups and People
2013
Security and INTelligence SYStem is an Italian research project which aims to create an integrated system for the analysis of multi-modal data sources (text, images, video, audio), to assist operators in homeland security applications. Within this project the Scientific Research Unit of the University of Palermo is responsible of the image and video analysis activity. The SRU of Palermo developed a web service based architecture that provides image and video analysis capabilities to the integrated analysis system. The developed architecture uses both state of the art techniques, adapted to cope with the particular problem at hand, and new algorithms to provide the following services: image …
Improvement in yield and fruit size and quality of the main Italian table olive cultivar 'Nocellara del Belice'
2014
Olive (Olea europaea L.) shows alternate bearing, with unreliable cropping patterns and inconsistent fruit size and quality every year. In many countries, thinning with naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA) is used to minimise alternate bearing behavior in olives. However, in Italy, growers are reluctant to employ this practice and no detailed knowledge is available for specific cultivars. We evaluated the effects of spraying NAA on various dates on the productive and vegetative characteristics of the main Italian table olive cultivar'Nocellara del Belice'. Trunk cross-sectional area, fruit set, fruit drop, fruit size, pit size, yield per tree, crop density and flesh to pit ratio were analysed. The …
Nitrogen input effectiveness on carbon sequestration in rainfed cropping system
2016
The combined effect of total N and C/N ratio had a large influence on the decomposition rate and consequently on potential soil organic carbon sequestration. The aim of the work was to evaluate Carbon sequestration potentiality under three mineral N fertilization levels in interaction with two cropping systems characterized by addition of N input due to leguminous species in the rotation. The study was carried out in the semiarid Mediterranean environment in a 18years long-term experiment. Is well know that in the semiarid environment the excess of N fertilization reduces biomass yield and the consequent C input. On the contrary, both N and C input determine high difference in C/N input rat…