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Wheat landraces are locally adapted populations that are suitable for low-input agronomic management and constraining pedo-climatic conditions. The productivity of landraces under high-input and optimal conditions is usually lower than modern wheat varieties. The present study compared the response of Sicilian wheat landraces and modern varieties to organic management, including organic fertilization, and conventional management, including mineral fertilization and chemical weed control, under rainfed condition and supplementary irrigation in a field trial conducted on a xerofluvent soil in a semiarid Mediterranean climate. Modern varieties were on average more productive than landraces, although certain landraces achieved comparable yields, in particular under organic management. The increase in grain yield under conventional management in comparison with the organic management was higher for modern varieties than landraces. The loss of productivity in rainfed conditions was lower for landraces compared to modern varieties. The grain quality traits were similar between landraces and modern varieties and in both cases the conventional management led to an improvement of the traits. These findings highlight the resilience and adaptability of traditional wheat landraces to low-input agricultural systems and offer valuable insights into improving the sustainability and productivity of wheat production in Mediterranean environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The restoration of polluted soils is crucial for ecosystem recovery services. Evidently, phytoremediation is a biological and sustainable technique that includes the use of plants to remediate heavy-metal-contaminated land; the plants should be tolerant to the contamination and capable of uptake or immobilization of the heavy metals in the soil. Moreover, defining an economically efficient approach to the remediation of a contaminated area, with the possibility of further utilization of phytoremediation biomass, renders energy crops a great option for this technique. Energy crops, in fact, are known for their ability to grow with low agricultural input, and later, the biomass product can be used to produce biofuels, bioenergy, and bioproducts in a sustainable and renewable way, creating economic potential, especially when these crops are cultivated in marginal lands. The aim of this work is to test two monoecious industrial hemp varieties in different levels of Cd, Pb, and Ni in soil. Both varieties were tolerant to levels of Cd and Pb contamination that were higher than the limit for commercial and industrial use, while Ni showed a significant effect at all the tested concentrations. The variety Futura 75 performed better than Kc Dora in terms of productivity and tolerance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sweet sorghum is a C4 plant with great biomass potential yield in semi-arid environments. Under growing conditions affected by water shortage and nutrient deficiency, the optimal combination of irrigation and nitrogen (N) fertilization rate is a central issue for sustainable farming systems. In this paper, a N balance study was applied to sweet sorghum cv. Keller, managed under three irrigation levels (I0, I50, I100: 0, 50, and 100% crop evapotranspiration—ETc restoration) and four N-fertilization rates (N0, N60, N120, N180: 0, 60, 120, and 180 kg ha−1). The 15N-labelled fertilization technique was used to assess the fate of N fertilizer within the agroecosystem. Dry biomass yield was significantly affected by the irrigation, while N rates had no effect. Across N and irrigation levels, the isotopic composition showed that approximately 34% of N applied by fertilization was used by the crop, 56% remained in the soil at the end of the cropping season, 1.83% was leached as nitrate, and 1.72% was volatilized as ammonia. N-fertilizer uptake was the lowest in I0, while in N0, the soil was strongly N-impoverished since sorghum showed a great aptitude to benefit from the soil N reserve. An even N input/output system (i.e., N-output corresponded to N-input) was observed in the N120 treatment, and the soil N reserve remained unchanged, while the system was N-enriched (positive input/output) in N180. However, although beneficial for crop nutrition and soil N reserve for subsequent crops in rotation, the N180 treatment is unsustainable due to many environmental side effects in the agroecosystem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing bioeconomy will require a greater supply of biomass in the future for both bioenergy and bio-based products. Today, many bioenergy cropping systems (BCS) are suboptimal due to either social-ecological threats or technical limitations. In addition, the competition for land between bioenergy-crop cultivation, food-crop cultivation, and biodiversity conservation is expected to increase as a result of both continuous world population growth and expected severe climate change effects. This study investigates how BCS can become more social-ecologically sustainable in future. It brings together expert opinions from the fields of agronomy, economics, meteorology, and geography. Potential solutions to the following five main requirements for a more holistically sustainable supply of biomass are summarized: (i) bioenergy-crop cultivation should provide a beneficial social-ecological contribution, such as an increase in both biodiversity and landscape aesthetics, (ii) bioenergy crops should be cultivated on marginal agricultural land so as not to compete with food-crop production, (iii) BCS need to be resilient in the face of projected severe climate change effects, (iv) BCS should foster rural development and support the vast number of small-scale family farmers, managing about 80% of agricultural land and natural resources globally, and (v) bioenergy-crop cultivation must be planned and implemented systematically, using holistic approaches. Further research activities and policy incentives should not only consider the economic potential of bioenergy-crop cultivation, but also aspects of biodiversity, soil fertility, and climate change adaptation specific to site conditions and the given social context. This will help to adapt existing agricultural systems in a changing world and foster the development of a more social-ecologically sustainable bioeconomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]