Search results for "Mediterranean environment"

Long-term effects of no tillage treatment on soil N availability, N uptake, and 15N-fertilizer recovery of durum wheat differ in relation to crop seq…

2016

Abstract No tillage (NT) soil management has largely been promoted because of its potential to generate both economic and environmental benefits. However, it often leads to reductions in crop yield and quality, which in many cases have been attributed to the effects this technique has on the nitrogen (N) dynamics in the soil–plant system. This 2-year study, performed within a long-term experiment in which NT was continuously applied for over 15 years, aimed to verify whether and to what extent the use of NT affects soil N availability, recovery of 15 N-labeled fertilizer, and N use efficiency (NUE) and its components (N uptake efficiency, NUpE; N utilization efficiency, NUtE). Durum wheat w…

Soil organic carbon stocks under recommended management practices in different soils of semiarid vineyards

2019

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) approach is widely used to estimate the C account through the use of standardized coefficients that are not site specific. For these reasons, the aim of the work was to define specific IPCC coefficient taking into account differences in pedological characteristics that affect soil C steady state. In a vineyard area of Sicily, the effectiveness of 5 years of recommended management practice (RMP) adoption on soil organic carbon (SOC) stock increases was evaluated by considering 100 paired sites distributed over four functional soil groups. Each site consisted of two neighbouring plots. The soil of one plot was managed with cover crops accor…

Breeding phenology of Bufo viridis Laurenti, 1768 in Sicily (S Italy)

2006

Tecniche conservative di gestione del suolo in ambiente mediterraneo: risultati di un ventennio di sperimentazioni.

2013

Weed seedbank size and composition in a long-term tillage and crop sequence experiment

2015

Summary Knowledge of the effects of agricultural practices on weed seedbank dynamics is essential for predicting future problems in weed management. This article reports data relative to weed seedbank structure after 18 years of continuous application of conventional tillage (CT, based on mouldboard ploughing) or no tillage (NT) within three crop sequences (continuous wheat, WW; wheat–faba bean, WF; and wheat–berseem clover, WB). Tillage system did not affect the size of the total weed seedbank, but altered both its composition and the distribution of seeds within the soil profile. In particular, the adoption of CT favoured some species (mainly Polygonum aviculare), whereas the continuous u…

Effetti della Modalità di Gestione del Suolo e dell’Avvicendamento Colturale sulla Dinamica delle Popolazioni di Infestanti nel Frumento Duro in Ambi…

2013

Micropropagation and in vitro culture of Pyrethrum [Chrysanthemum cinerariifolium (Trev.) Vis.]

2014

Pyrethrum (Chrysanthemum cinerariifolium (Trev.) Vis. = Tanacetum cineariaefolium (Trev.) Schultz-Bip.) is a perennial herbaceous plant belonging to the family Asteraceae, native to Albania and the area of former Yugoslavia. It is the only species in the genus Tanacetum having an agronomic importance, although the genus consists of several species producing similar types of bioactive metabolites. The species is grown in order to obtain the insecticidal compounds collectively termed pyrethrins, which are found primarily in the flower heads. In this work we discuss the results found from a worldwide literature review about the micropropagation techniques followed on Pyrethrum, the in vitro cu…

Oilseed Brassica species for fuel production in Mediterranean environments: First field results and technical evaluations

2008

Energy is a major constraint of developed and under-development countries, and the sustainable production of biofuels for use in industrial and domestic sectors has been implemented successfully in many parts of the world. For a number of reasons, some Brassica species, such as B. napus, B. juncea or B. carinata, seem especially interesting as biofuel crops for Mediterranean environments, and many studies and researches have been carried out in order to ensure a successful introduction of them inside the current farming systems. In this work we report the first results of the field trials performed in 2006/07 in the experimental farm “Sparacia” (Cammarata – AG – Sicily), representative of t…

Long-term effects of contrasting tillage on soil organic carbon, nitrous oxide and ammonia emissions in a Mediterranean Vertisol under different crop…

2018

This 2-year study aimed to verify whether the continuous application of no tillage (NT) for over 20 years, in comparison with conventional tillage (CT), affects nitrous oxide (NO) and ammonia (NH) emissions from a Vertisol and, if so, whether such an effect varies with crop sequence (continuous wheat, WW and wheat after faba bean, FW). To shed light on the mechanisms involved in determining N-gas emissions, soil bulk density, water filled pore space (WFPS), some carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) pools, denitrifying enzyme activity (DEA), and nitrous oxide reductase gene abundance (nosZ gene) were also assessed at 0–15 and 15–30 cm soil depth. Tillage system had no significant effect on total NH e…

A simple method to directly retrieve reference evapotranspiration from geostationary satellite images

2013

Abstract Application of FAO-56 methodology for the assessment of reference evapotranspiration, ET 0 , is challenging in areas of the world with sparse meteorological network stations. For this reason alternative procedures using remotely observed data have been proposed in the literature. In this work, a simplified version of the Makkink approach [J. Inst. Wat. Eng. 11: 277–288, 1957] was tested in a typical Mediterranean environment (Sicily, Italy). The implemented Makkink approach (MAK) uses remotely estimated solar radiation derived from Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) satellite data and in situ observations of air temperature to assess ET 0 at daily time scale. Alternatively, taking ad…