Search

Fifty-years time series of Sun Spot Number, Western Mediterranean Oscillation Index, Italiangrain productions of Wheat and Maize, and those from a Long Term Agronomic Experimentheld in Bologna, have been compared to identify trends and fluctuations. Data, denoisedby EMD and SSA, are analysed by wavelet technique, showing how SSN oscillations affectregional scale dynamics, where in the last two decades a range of fluctuations (7–16 years)is also evident. Both signals also reflects on yield fluctuations of Wheat and Maize at bothnational and local level, as is evidenced by cross-wavelet analysis. Results are useful forproduction forecasts and risk analysis.

Depression, anxiety and abnormal illness behaviour during perinatal period: correlations between mothers and fathers Introduction During perinatal period the parent's emotional states are significantly linked and an important function of the father seems to be provision of a secure base for the mother. In fact, anxious or depressed fathers can be a handicap for the emotional equilibrium of their companion. Method To better understand the possible effects of parental affective symptoms and illness behaviour on the couple relationships and on the partner's mental state, the authors studied a sample of 50 couples assessed from the second trimester of pregnancy to the first trimester after delivery. On four occasions (at the 5th and 8th month of pregnancy, on the 3rd-6th day after delivery and at the 3rd month after delivery) all the subjects were asked to fill out the following questionnaires: the Illness Behaviour Questionnaire (IBQ), the Symptom Questionnaire (SQ), the CES-D and a Psychosocial Couple Questionnaire. Results Statistical analysis outlined that during pregnancy up to the puerperium fathers suffer from emotional alterations with oscillations that are correlated with the maternal suffering. The fathers whose partners have been diagnosed with an affective alteration during post-partum (maternity blues or post-partum depression) are more depressed (p= .01), anxious (p= .02) and show higher levels of somatization (p= .05) and hypochondria (p= .03). They tend to manifest their suffering with somatic complains (p= .001), to be less involved in the delivery and absent at the partum moment (p= .001) and to worry about their health condition and paternal role. Conclusions In our sample the partners of women who undergo depressive post-partum symptoms differ significantly from the controls and manifest more anxiety and depression, or increased affective disorders already at the fifth month of pregnancy. Psychological interventions in the affective troubles during pregnancy and puerperium would therefore concern both parents.

Gastrointestinal haemorrhage is extremely frequent, but in some cases the aetiology may remain unknown. Haemorrhage from the small bowel especially can create important diagnostic problems. We report the case of a patient admitted to hospital with intestinal bleeding in an ileal site in association with aortic stenosis. Enteric angiodysplasia is a frequent pathology in the surgery of the gastrointestinal tract. Recognizing bleeding lesions in the small intestine can be really difficult. Concerning the case reported here, the most probable diagnostic hypothesis is Heyde's syndrome, which is characterised by valvular aortic stenosis together with gastrointestinal bleeding due to cryptogenetic angiodysplasias. The choice to be made in the therapeutic management of angiodysplasia is still a debatable issue and should be suited to the patient's clinical state and the site and extent of the bleeding. In the literature the link between aortic valvular stenosis and intestinal angiodysplasia is unclear. The physiopathological relationship between the two entities is still mysterious.

Soils store vast amounts of carbon (C) on land, and increasing soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks in already managed soils such as croplands may be one way to remove C from the atmosphere, thereby limiting subsequent warming. The main objective of this study was to estimate the amount of additional C input needed to annually increase SOC stocks by 4‰ at 16 long-term agricultural experiments in Europe, including exogenous organic matter (EOM) additions. We used an ensemble of six SOC models and ran them under two configurations: (1) with default parametrization and (2) with parameters calibrated site-by-site to fit the evolution of SOC stocks in the control treatments (without EOM). We compared model simulations and analysed the factors generating variability across models. The calibrated ensemble was able to reproduce the SOC stock evolution in the unfertilised control treatments. We found that, on average, the experimental sites needed an additional 1.5 ± 1.2 Mg C ha−1 year−1 to increase SOC stocks by 4‰ per year over 30 years, compared to the C input in the control treatments (multi-model median ± median standard deviation across sites). That is, a 119% increase compared to the control. While mean annual temperature, initial SOC stocks and initial C input had a significant effect on the variability of the predicted C input in the default configuration (i.e., the relative standard deviation of the predicted C input from the mean), only water-related variables (i.e., mean annual precipitation and potential evapotranspiration) explained the divergence between models when calibrated. Our work highlights the challenge of increasing SOC stocks in agriculture and accentuates the need to increasingly lean on multi-model ensembles when predicting SOC stock trends and related processes. To increase the reliability of SOC models under future climate change, we suggest model developers to better constrain the effect of water-related variables on SOC decomposition. This work benefited from the French state aid managed by the ANR under the “Investissements d'avenir” programme with the reference ANR-16-CONV-0003 (CLAND project). EB, RZA and BG are supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 101000289 (Holisoils project). RZA was also supported by the United States Department of Energy, Office of Science, and Office of Biological and Environmental Research. Oak Ridge National Laboratory is managed by UT-Battelle, LLC, for the United States Department of Energy under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725.

Agriculture is facing the complex challenge of satisfying increasing food demands, despite the current and projected negative impacts of climate change on yields. Increasing crop diversity at a national scale has been suggested as an adaptive measure to better cope with negative climate impacts such as increasing temperatures and drought, but there is little evidence to support this hypothesis at the field scale. Using seven long-term experiments across a wide latitudinal gradient in Europe, we showed that growing multiple crop species in a rotation always provided higher yields for both winter and spring cereals (average +860 and +390 kg ha−1 per year, respectively) compared with a continuous monoculture. In particular, yield gains in diverse rotations were higher in years with high temperatures and scant precipitations, i.e. conditions expected to become more frequent in the future, rendering up to c. 1000 kg ha−1 per year compared to monocultures. Winter cereals yielded more in diverse rotations immediately after initiation of the experiment and kept this advantage constant over time. For spring cereals, the yield gain increased over time since diversification adoption, arriving to a yearly surplus of c. 500 kg ha−1 after 50–60 years with still no sign of plateauing. Diversified rotations emerge as a promising way to adapt temperate cropping systems and contribute to food security under a changing climate. However, novel policies need to be implemented and investments made to give means and opportunities for farmers to adopt diversified crop rotations.

In this paper we report our efforts to develop an inter-temporal model for the evaluation of the impact of organic farming on greenhouse gases emissions, that we called BIOSUS-MAD. The model focuses on the maximization of farmer's net income though different crops rotations constrained to the use of resource inputs; outputs of this optimization process are numerical values for key variables useful to estimate a set of social, economic and environmental indicators. These indicators will feed a multi-criteria model providing a synthetic and comparable sustainability overall index. This approach makes MAD a potentially useful tool for policy-makers to get an ex-ante assessment of the effects of agro-environmental policies. The model can manage different scenarios and could provide useful information to policy makers by running simulations incorporating European economic and/or environmental policies.

Summary Seventeen Italian experiments relating to maize, soyabean and durum wheat were used to analyse the variability of duration of tolerated competition (DTC) and weed-free period (WFP) curves across reasonably homogeneous areas. The data sets were analysed by regression analysis using four models relating yield loss to weed density, time of emergence and removal. These models differ in the way they account for the effect of time of weed removal on potential competitiveness. A sigmoidal relationship between these two variables appears necessary. The model with the best overall performance was then used to test the stability of the parameters that give the shape of the curve in relation to time of emergence and removal. This was done by comparing a full model with shape parameters specific to each experiment and a reduced model with a common set of parameters for all the experiments referring to a specific crop. For all three crops, the residual sum of squares of the reduced model did not increase significantly, indicating that, across tested environments, the yield loss caused by mixed weed infestations can be expressed by a single set of parameters relating weed competitivity to time of emergence and removal. For a given area, it should therefore be possible to predict yield loss on the basis of a quite limited set of experiments, thus greatly simplifying the development and use of decision support systems (DSS).

International audience; Arable land is a major component both in landscape and in the food production system. The ability to understand and describe how spatial and dynamical characters affect human life and eventually to design the agricultural systems beyond the processes ruling them is fundamental to preserve land and ensure economic, ecological and social sustainability. In this paper, we will refer to cropping scheme as a general term merging two aspects of cropping systems, the spatial and the temporal one, represented respectively in terms of crop pattern and crop rotation. Analysis of crop rotations is of basic importance in sustainable farming strategies dealing with climate change, food security and organic farming. In fact, crop rotations are fundamental to maintaining fertility and, even if their analysis often focus on local crops, they help face market and weather uncertainties as well as interpret landscape diversity and its dynamics (Dury et al., 2012, Thenail et al. 2009). In European Community (EC) an agricultural holding database standard has been developed, the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN), which is seldom rich in information on farm management techniques. The present study makes use of Italian FADN to identify more recurrent crop patterns and evaluate the possibility to describe them as a crop rotation [...]

18 páginas, 6 figuras y 4 tablas, The fundamental mechanisms whereby organic inputs stabilize in soil are poorly resolved, which limits our current capacity to predict the dynamics of soil organic matter (OM)turnover and its influence on soil quality and functioning. Here we fractionated soil OM from long-term experimental field plots either unamended or amended with two organic materials of different quality (i.e., solid cattle manure and crop residues) for 44 years into five measurable and meaningful pools directly related to conceptual preservation mechanisms: dissolved OM, mineral-free particulate OM located outside aggregates (unprotected from decomposition), OM occluded within both macroaggregates and microaggregates(weakly and strongly protected by physical mechanisms, respectively), and OM intimately associated with soil mineral particles (protected by chemical mechanisms). Compared to the unamended soil, the application of cattle manure and crop residues increased total organic C content by 35 and 10%, respectively. Most of these increases (up to 60 and 72% for cattle manure and crop residues, respectively) were explained by the mineral-associated OM pool, followed by the intra-microaggregate OM fraction. In general, the distribution and dynamics of N content paralleled those of C content. As determined by a range of modern nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) techniques, including 13C cross polarization magic angle spinning (MAS), 1H high resolution (HR)-MAS, and 1H 13C heteronuclear single quantum coherence HR-MAS NMR, the mineral-associated OM fraction was found to be predominately of microbial origin, unlike free and intra-aggregate OM pools, which were dominated by plant structures at different stages of decomposition. As a whole, our results indicate that the main mechanism by which organic inputs are stabilized and OM accrues in soils is not the physical and chemical protection of undecayed or partially degraded organic structures, but the adsorption on mineral surfaces of microbial biomass and microbial by-products resulting from microbial growth, transformation, and degradation processes. It is possible that organic amendments increase more than previously thought the microbial populations of the soil, which live, thrive, and die in close association with the mineral surfaces. This mechanism appears to be enhanced with the addition of stable organic materials., This work was partly supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (research grant AGL2009-09124). C. Plaza thanks the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) for the travel grant (PA1003114) which made possible his visit to the University of Toronto. Andre Simpson thanks the NSERC Discovery and Strategic Programs for providing support.

Although describing the primary sector of a given country is a common institutional practice, such studies usually offer aggregated information on holding, not supplying the information required for farm-level simulations. The present study aimed to identify the main typologies of Italian farms from the 2007 database of RICA (the Italian section of the European Union’s Farm Accountancy Data Network). Using a hierarchical strategy driven by climates (5) and slopes (3), farms have been grouped by super-structure, described in terms of the presence and extent of primary activities (livestock, farmland use). The resulting picture of Italian farms is based on 35 farm types, the most common of which grow low-input orchards (e.g., olive trees). On the plains in warm climatic areas, low-input orchards and arable crops dominate; in hilly and mountainous areas, mixed farms with forage crops, meadows, ovines, and cattle prevail. In more temperate areas, the most common farm type is based on intensive and field crops (e.g., durum and bread wheat). In temperate hilly and mountain areas, mixed farms combining meadows, woods, and cattle become predominant. Though the representative farm typology derives from a database (RICA) that accounts for only about 1% of Italian farms, it nevertheless provides the information required to develop bio-economic simulations.

Purpose: The CQESTR model is a process-based C model recently developed to simulate soil organic matter (SOM) dynamics and uses readily available or easily measurable input parameters. The current version of CQESTR (v. 2.0) has been validated successfully with a number of datasets from agricultural sites in North America but still needs to be tested in other geographic areas and soil types under diverse organic management systems. Materials and methods: We evaluated the predictive performance of CQESTR to simulate long-term (34 years) soil organic C (SOC) changes in a SOM-depleted European soil either unamended or amended with solid manure, liquid manure, or crop residue. Results and discussion: Measured SOC levels declined over the study period in the unamended soil, remained constant in the soil amended with crop residues, and tended to increase in the soils amended with manure, especially with solid manure. Linear regression analysis of measured SOC contents and CQESTR predictions resulted in a correlation coefficient of 0.626 (P < 0.001) and a slope and an intercept not significantly different from 1 and 0, respectively (95% confidence level). The mean squared deviation and root mean square error were relatively small. Simulated values fell within the 95% confidence interval of the measured SOC, and predicted errors were mainly associated with data scattering. Conclusions: The CQESTR model was shown to predict, with a reasonable degree of accuracy, the organic C dynamics in the soils examined. The CQESTR performance, however, could be improved by adding an additional parameter to differentiate between pre-decomposed organic amendments with varying degrees of stability. © 2012 Springer-Verlag (outside the USA).

Long-term field experiments are crucial for studing the effects of different management practices on organic C storage capacity of agricultural soils. One of the most important pools of soil organic C (SOC) is that of the humic substances and in particular of humic acids (HA-http//ihss.gatech.edu/ihss2) that are complex macromolecules modified from plant compounds or newly synthesized during decomposition, that accumulate in soil. Because of their resistance to microbial degradation, they represent a crucial component of SOC where C tends to be stored for long periods and an important reservoir of nutrients. In the long-term field experiment at the Cadriano farm (Bologna University) different fertilization treatments have been compared for over thirty years on a continuous-wheat (used as a reference field) and a continuous-maize cropping. These two plant species have different C isotope composition because the C3 and C4 photosynthetic pathways differently fractionate against the heavier isotope of CO2-C, therefore the isotopic approach was used to quantify the C3 and C4-derived C in soil. In particular three fertilization treatments were compared: no fertilization (control) mineral fertilization and organic amendment, and the content of old C3 and new C4-derived C in soil and in the humic acids (HA) was determined. Moreover a structural characterization of HA was carried out with thermogravimetric (TG) and differential thermal analysis (DTA). After 36 years of continuous maize cropping the old C3-derived C similarly decreased in spite of the treatments. The new C4-derived C constantly increased with all the treatments, significant higher amounts compared the control were measured with the mineral, and even more with the organic treatment. In the HA the amount of C3-derived C decreased over the studied period in the control and in the mineral treatment, whereas it increased with the organic treatment. The amount of C4-derived C in the HA linearly increased over the studied period in all the treatments with the higher values measured for the mineral and organic one. TG-DTA data showed that the 36 years organic amendment caused in the HA an increase in aromatic compounds compared to the control and the mineral treatment.

The soil organic matter content represents a huge reservoir of plant nutrients and an effective safeguard against pollution; beside it can sequestrate atmospheric CO 2 . Since 1966 up to now in the Southeast Po valley (Italy), the soil organic C (SOC) and total N (TN) dynamics in the 0–0.40 m soil layer under a maize–wheat rainfed rotation are studied as influenced by organic and mineral N fertilizations. Every year in the same plots cattle manure, cattle slurry, and crop residues (i.e. wheat straw and maize stalk) are ploughed under to 0.40 m depth at a same dry matter rate (6.0 and 7.5 t DM ha −1 year −1 after wheat and maize, respectively) and are compared to an unamended control. Each plot is splitted to receive four rates of mineral fertilizer (0–100–200–300 kg N ha −1 ). In the whole experiment, in 2000 SOC concentration was lower than in 1966 (6.77 and 7.72 g kg −1 , respectively), likely for the deeper tillage that diluted SOC and favoured mineralization in deeper soil layer. From 1972 to 2000 SOC stock did not change in the control and N fertilized plots, while it increased at mean rates of 0.16, 0.18, and 0.26 t ha −1 year −1 with the incorporation of residues, slurry and manure, corresponding to sequestration efficiencies of 3.7, 3.8 and 8.1% of added C with the various materials. TN followed the same SOC dynamic, demonstrating how it depends on the soil organic matter. Manure thus confirmed its efficacy in increasing both SOC content and soil fertility on the long-term. In developed countries, however, this material has become scarcely available; slurry management is expensive and implies high environmental risks. Moreover, in a C balance at a farm (or regional) scale, the CO 2 lost during manure and slurry stocking should be considered. For these reasons, the incorporation of cereal residues, even if only a little of their C content was found capable of soil accumulation, appears the best way to obtain a significant CO 2 sequestration in developed countries. Our long-term experiment clearly shows how difficult it is to modify SOC content. Moreover, because climate and soil type can greatly influence SOC dynamic, to increase CO 2 sequestration in cropland, it is important to optimize the fertilization within an agricultural management that includes all the agronomic practices (e.g. tillage, water management, cover crops, etc.) favouring the organic matter build up in the soil.

Sewage sludge effects to cropland have been evaluated in a long-term field experiment which started in 1988 and is still underway in the eastern part of the Po Valley (Italy), on a silty-loam soil. Each autumn municipal-industrial wastewater sludge has been applied at 5 and 10 Mg DM ha-1 yr-1 as anaerobically digested slurry (liquid), belt filtered material (dewatered) and composted with wheat straw, on a winter wheat - maize - sugar beet rotation. The 15 years continuous application of sludge significantly increased organic matter, total N, Olsen P, Cu and Zn content in the topsoil, with greater effects at the highest rate. Composted sludge favoured the highest OM topsoil increase. Sludge spreading improved soil fertility and crop yields, but it was associated with possible negative environmental effects: on water, due to increased phosphorus availability, and on soil ecology, due to zinc build up in the topsoil. The results confirmed that compulsory application rates based on real crop nitrogen requirements and matching Nitrate EU Directive, undoubtedly can guarantee a sound sustainability in sewage sludge recycling on cropland in the long run.