Tasks
Research on agronomic techniques
on industrial crops
Research area
and specialization
Activity of CRA-CIN Agronomy group focuses on cropping system analysis and impact of climate change on crop production, the main specializations are:
- Agrometeorology and agro-systems modelling
- Soil microbial ecology and soil health
Agrometeorology and agro-systems modelling
Research activity focuses in systems analysis and simulation modelling of environmental and management impacts on agricultural production. CRA-CIN Agronomy participates in national and international projects on analysing and modelling cropping/farming systems, and effects of climate and land use change on agro-ecosystems. Since 2002-2006 CRA-CIN Agronomy coordinated a national project on development software tools for eco-compatible planning of farms, followed by a consistent participation to the FP6 EU Project SEAMLESS.
One important research area CRA-CIN Agronomy is the definition of methodologies for reusable agro-ecological model components development. In cooperation with other institutions, CRA-CIN Agronomy is engaged in developing and maintaining software tools for agrometeorology and agricultural modelling, organized in three main research lines:
A) Cropping System Modelling and Software Development
B) Farming System
Modelling
Soil microbial ecology
Research activity of CRA-CIN Agronomy is mostly involved on components of soil suppressiveness, defined as the natural ability of soil to control pest and pathogens to soil borne pathogens, and soil microbial indicators applied to agronomic and environmental studies. These research areas require an interdisciplinary approach, including soil microbial ecology, plant pathology and basic mycology, in addition to familiarity with the use of molecular tools for the study of soil microbial communities. Research activity varies from surveys on fungal pathogens in fruit tree orchards -replant diseases and in horticultural crops, characterization of pathogens and their relationship with host plants, and bioassay for soil health.
CRA-CIN Agronomy is coordinator of BIO-INCROP project an FP7 ERA-NET project call CORE ORGANIC 2.
CRA-CIN Agronomy group holds following collections:
- Linum usitatissimum genotype
- Soil borne fungi (beneficial and pathogenic isolates)
- Software |
