Dr. Silvia Pampana
Department of Agriculture, Food and Environment, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.Speech Title: Does barley and horse-bean grain quality depend on intercropping and nitrogen fertilization?
Abstract: Sustainable intensification implies higher agricultural production with lower environmental impact and is mandatory to meet the global demand for food and feed.
Intercropping, i.e., the cultivation of two or more crops on the same field at the same time, is an agronomic strategy for crop diversification which allows lowering inputs while achieving higher crop yields.
Overyielding of intercropping on sole cropping is generally recognized because of resource complementarities between species but may also be related to increased tolerance to weeds and/or pest and disease resilience. However, from a farmer’s perspective also the quality of the products should be maximized, and this would be even more imperative if the grains are used as bulk for the feed or food industry. To the best of our knowledge only few studies have addressed this aspect of the intercropping performance. To fill this gap, in this two-year field study we aimed to assess the grain quality of a barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) and horse-bean
(Vicia faba L. var minor) intercropping (IC) compared to sole crop (SC). Both IC and SC were cultivated in alternate rows in an additive design and fertilized with five nitrogen (N) fertilization rates (i.e., 0, 50, 100, 150 and 200 kg N ha−1) in Central Italy.
We found that the protein and fiber concentrations of the grains were significantly modified by the mean effect of the cropping system (i.e., SC vs IC) as it was higher in intercropped crops than in sole crops. However, the changes found in the bromatological characteristics of the grains of pure crops and of intercropping depended almost exclusively on the variations in barley grains, because in field bean the quality of the grain remained almost unchanged.
N fertilization slightly improved the grain quality of both systems and increasing N rates decreased acid-detergent fiber (ADF) concentration which in turn augmented neutral-detergent fiber (NDF).
However, when considering the protein and fiber yields, we concluded that intercropping can allow for a decrease in nitrogen fertilizers, without compromising the quality of the intercropped barley compared to the monocrop.
We believe that our results will be useful to encourage the adoption of cereal/legume intercropping by European farmers, because they permit overcoming the barriers that farmers perceive about market opportunities of products obtained in intercropping systems.
Biography: Silvia Pampana has 26 years of experience in agronomy research and is a researcher at the Department of Agriculture, Food and Environment of the University of Pisa, Italy. She is also part of the “Enrico Avanzi” Agro-environmental Research Center of the University of Pisa, dedicated to research on sustainable agriculture and of the Centre for Climate Change Impact, of the University of Pisa, committed to the study of the climate change. Silvia is also the nominated Editor in Chief of Agronomy Journal, the flagship journal of the American Society of Agronomy.
She graduated magna cum laude in agricultural science and then earned a PhD in agronomy and crop science from University of Pisa, the oldest school in the field worldwide (established on March 1st, 1844).
Her understanding of most cropping systems is comprehensive, and she has a clear understanding of rigorous agronomic research. Her research centers around the physiology of yield development in field crops, with special attention to cereals and legumes to identify agronomic strategies for sustainable intensification of cropping systems i.e., allelopathy, intercropping, crop association and rotation, mineral, and organic N fertilization, biosolids, and resilience to abiotic stress, such as
waterlogging.
She has also worked within the European Union focus group on crop associations, including milpa and protein crops to integrate crop associations into existing cropping systems and farm landscapes to increase farm resilience and efficient use of natural resources while reducing the dependency on external inputs.
Silvia is especially committed to raise awareness of the leadership position agronomy holds within science in the search for sustainability.