Giancarlo Pagnani

Università degli Studi di Teramo | UNITE · Department of Bioscience and Technologies for Food, Agriculture and Environment

Plant disease management via biocontrol of phytopathogens is one of the major approaches to the imagination of sustainable agriculture. Besides agrochemicals, using inoculants of beneficial bacteria is a common tool to control fungal and bacterial phytopathogens; they are known as biological control agents (BCAs) or biopesticides. This chapter focu...

Dear Colleagues, Among the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, there is the promotion of sustainable agriculture, with a sound natural resources management. The sustainable use of soil includes the protection of organic matter contents and microbiota/microbiome, which are essential...

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is increasingly employed for precision monitoring in plant science, as it is a non-invasive technique for the quantitative analysis of the functional mechanisms of plant metabolism. When exported to digital agronomy in combination with qualitative detection, PET has the potential to drive the sustainable managemen...

Climate change induces several abiotic stresses that negatively influence growth and yield of crops. Higher CO2 levels, temperature increase, and change in intensity and frequency of precipitations have a significant impact on productive landscapes, both quantitatively and qualitatively. One of the sustainable approaches to mitigate abiotic stresse...

Time activity curve (TAC) signal processing in plant positron emission tomography (PET) is a frontier nuclear science technique to bring out the quantitative fluid dynamic (FD) flow parameters of the plant vascular system and generate knowledge on crops and their sustainable management, facing the accelerating global climate change. The sparse spac...

The progressive reduction in the quantities of copper regulated by the European Union is focusing the research on new formulations with a reduced copper content but equally effective. In this regard, the activity of an Italian copper chabasite-rich zeolitite, which proved to be effective against grapevine grey mold and sour rot, was assessed agains...

The processes of soil erosion and land degradation are more rapid in the case of inappropriate agricultural management, which leads to increased soil loss rates. Moreover, climatic conditions are one of the most important determining factors affecting agriculture, especially in the Mediterranean areas featuring irregular rainfall and high summer te...

Positron Emission Tomography is a non-disruptive and high-sensitive digital imaging technique which allows to measure in-vivo and non invasively the changes of metabolic and transport mechanisms in plants. When it comes to the early assessment of stress-induced alterations of plant functions, plant PET has the potential of a major breakthrough. The...

Esca of grapevine causes yield losses correlated with incidence and severity symptom expression. Factors associated with leaf symptom mechanisms are yet to be fully clarified. Therefore, in 2019 and 2020, macro and microelement analyses and leaf reflectance measurements were carried out on leaves at different growth stages in a vineyard located in...

The present work aimed to study suitability of a consortium of Azospirillum brasilense, Gluconacetobacter diazotrophicus, Herbaspirillum seropedicae, and Burkholderia ambifaria as biofertilizers. Strains were assayed for plant growth-promoting characteristics (i.e., auxins production, phosphate solubilizing capability, and 1-aminocyclopropane-1-car...

Plant stress detection is considered one of the most critical areas for the improvement of crop yield in the compelling worldwide scenario, dictated by both the climate change and the geopolitical consequences of the Covid-19 epidemics. A complicated interconnection of biotic and abiotic stressors affect plant growth, including water, salt, tempera...

Plant growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB) afford plants several advantages (i.e., improvement of nutrient acquisition, growth, and development; induction of abiotic and biotic stress tolerance). Numerous PGPB strains have been isolated and studied over the years. However, only a few of them are available on the market, mainly due to the failed bacteri...

The activity of two zeolitites, differing in the presence of copper and their particle size, was assessed in a Trebbiano d’Abruzzo white berry cultivar, towards grapevine grey mould and sour rot, a serious problem in almost all grapevine-growing areas. In 2018 and 2019, zeolitites were applied before forecast of rainfalls, which likely induce infec...

Conservation Agriculture approach could be strategic for Soil Quality (SQ) conservation under the Mediterranean conditions of Southern Europe’s environments. In this study, we reported the results obtained during a 2-year field experiment (split-plot design) of a 7-year experiment started in 2010–2011, combining two tillage practices (Conventional...

Ancient wheats are characterized by high nutritional value, low nitrogen requirements, and good adaptability which make them particularly suitable for marginal areas or low-input agricultural systems. Among environmental-friendly fertilizers, plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria represent a promising tool thanks to their ability to colonize soil an...

Soil is threatened by the increase of human population, intensive management, urbanization and degradation. Sustainable Soil Management (SSM) is one of the main key factors both for significant crop production and for environment conservation. Conservation tillage techniques, especially applied together with the permanent maintenance of mulch cover...

Conservation agriculture (CA) can be very strategic in degradation prone soils of Mediterranean environments to recover soil fertility and consequently improve crop productivity as well as the quality traits of the most widespread crop, durum wheat, with reference to protein accumulation and composition. The results shown by two years of data in a...

The effects of light intensity and Magnesium (Mg) supply on quality traits, yield and macronutrient assimilation of red beet plants were studied in two greenhouse experiments (in 2017 and 2018). According to a split-plot design, we compared two photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) levels (100% PAR, Full Light, FL and 50% PAR, Light Reduction,...

Plants sharply adapt their growth and physiology to light availability. This study aimed at evaluating the effect of light quantity and quality manipulation on growth, morphological traits, pigment and secondary metabolites content in basil as well as comprehending the mechanisms which regulate such responses. Two experiments were carried out under...

In Mediterranean environments the adoption of Conservation Agriculture (CA) would allow growers to achieve environmental, agronomic and economic sustainability. We investigated the effect of different combination of crop establishment treatments and crop sequence (conventional tillage (CT) and durum wheat monocropping (WW); conventional tillage (CT...

Experiments were carried out to study patterns of artificial defoliation in radish in combination with sulphur (S) fertilization, to evaluate the contribution of younger and older leaves on plant growth and phenolics accumulation in storage roots. Biomass accumulation and partitioning were related to leaf age, magnitude and timing of the clipping t...

Germination is related with improvements of nutritional value of seeds, since it promotes accumulation of health-promoting phytochemicals. However, only few studies have investigated on phytochemicals accumulation during sprouting under sub-optimal conditions. Thus we investigated the effect of salinity during germination of an einkorn (TMoM), an e...

With this study the effects of water deficit on radish growth, dry mass production and partitioning, source–sink relations, physiological responses and accumulation of secondary metabolites in storage roots and leaves have been investigated. Three water stress treatments were applied: (Control) 100% of water holding capacity (WHC), (WS50) 50% of WH...

Management of cover crops provides mulching and/or topsoil incorporation of plant residues, which can enhance soil organic matter content as well as supply important nutrients. An experiment was conducted to evaluate the effects on tomato quality and yield performance of different managements of plant residues from three cover crops compared with p...