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The paper reflects on the evolution of ‘collective subjects’ and civil organizations promoting grassroots processes aimed at generating social innovation. Focusing on the experience of the Participatory Presidium of the Simeto River Agreement (eastern Sicily), the paper describes the process of institutionalization that has characterized this organization as the promoter of a new territorial governance. The aim is to reflect on obstacles, tensions and criticalities emerged during this process. In doing so, we try to identify a ‘lesson learned’ for planning: namely, promoting a hybridization of knowledge that could make more effective and capacitating to support territorial actors who, through organizational processes and practices, try to create new institutional models able to respond to public interest issues.

Abstract Introduction The paper investigates the relation between spatial justice and recognition. With this respect, it focuses on rhetorics of recognition, namely discourses, narratives and slogans put in place by actors who produce a territorial identity in order to be recognized in their peculiar and different characters. Case description The case-study employed is the Riace model, a worldwide known example of refugees and asylum seekers hosting and welcoming practice in Italy. Fieldnotes, public statements and newspaper articles were used to investigate both narratives through which Riace’s identity was produced and how this identity shaped Riace’s rhetorics of recognition within the context of a conflict between the local administration and the national government. Discussion and evaluation The paper shows how claims for recognition may drive towards negative outputs. Specifically, in the case of Riace, claims for diversity re-affirmed path-dependency and conditions of marginalization as a result of a depersonalised place-based approach and logics of exception. Conclusions Finally, the paper suggests that researchers should avoid considering diversity as a value per se in order to address spatial justice issues. Moreover, it suggests that rhetorics of recognition may help both in case of conflicting rationalities and to formulate situated ethical judgments.

Based on a field research in Riace (deemed a “model of hospitality”) from January to December 2017, this paper shows how the concept of community can operate as an apparatus (dispositif): a peculiar theoretical lens to investigate how different subjectivities and social actors – including the researcher – are shaped by, involved in, or excluded from interest formation processes, in the attempt to negotiate a here-and-now. The result is an investigation on the divide between participant observation and action research: being a "node of the field", can the researcher contribute to a co-production of knowledge, which in turn can trigger new processes of formation of interest?

The use of synthetic chemical products in agriculture is causing severe damage to the environment and human health, but agrochemicals are still widely used to protect our crops. To counteract this trend, we have been looking for alternative strategies to control plant diseases without causing harm to the environment or damage to our health. However, these alternatives are still far from completely replacing chemical products. Microorganisms have been widely known as a biological tool to control plant diseases, but their use is still limited due to the high variability in their efficacy, together with issues in product registration. However, the metabolites produced by these microorganisms can represent a novel tool for the environment-friendly management of plant diseases, while reducing the issues mentioned above. In this study, we explore the soil microbial diversity in natural systems to look for microorganisms with the potential to be used in pre- and post-harvest protection against fungal plant pathogens. Using a simple workflow, we isolated 22 bacterial strains that were tested both in vitro and in vivo for their ability to counteract the growth of common plant pathogens. The three best isolates, identified as members of the bacterial genus Pseudomonas, were used to produce a series of alcoholic extracts, which were then tested for their action against plant pathogens in simulated real-world applications. Results show that extracts from these isolates have an exceptional biocontrol activity and can be successfully used to control plant pathogens in operational setups. Thus, this study shows that the environmental microbiome is an important source of microorganisms producing metabolites that might provide an alternative strategy to synthetic chemical products.

The plant microbiome plays an important role in plant biology, ecology, and evolution. While recent technological developments enabled the characterization of plant-associated microbiota, we still know little about the impact of different biotic and abiotic factors on the diversity and structures of these microbial communities. Here, we characterized the structure of bacterial microbiomes of fruits, leaves, and soil collected from two olive genotypes (Sinopolese and Ottobratica), testing the hypothesis that plant genotype would impact each compartment with a different magnitude. Results show that plant genotype differently influenced the diversity, structure, composition, and co-occurence network at each compartment (fruits, leaves, soil), with a stronger effect on fruits compared to leaves and soil. Thus, plant genotype seems to be an important factor in shaping the structure of plant microbiomes in our system, and can be further explored to gain functional insights leading to improvements in plant productivity, nutrition, and defenses.

Pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) peel and sumac (Rhus coriaria L.) fruit and leaf extracts were chemically characterized and their ability to inhibit table grape (cv. Italia) rots caused by Botrytis cinerea was evaluated on artificially inoculated berries. Different extraction methods were applied and extracts were characterized through Ultra Fast High Performance Liquid Chromatography coupled to Photodiode array detector and Electrospray ionization Mass spectrometer (UPLC-PDA-ESI/MSn) for their phenol and anthocyanin contents. The concentrated pomegranate peel extract (PGE-C) was the richest in phenols (66.97 g gallic acid equivalents/kg) while the concentrated sumac extract from fruits (SUF-C) showed the highest anthocyanin amount (171.96 mg cyanidin 3-glucoside equivalents/kg). Both phenolic and anthocyanin profile of pomegranate and sumac extracts were quite different: pomegranate extract was rich in cyanidin 3-glucoside, pelargonidin 3-glucoside and ellagic acid derivatives, while sumac extract was characterized by 7-methyl-cyanidin 3-galactoside and gallic acid derivatives. The concentrated extracts from both pomegranate peel and sumac leaves significantly reduced the development of Botrytis rots. In particular, the extract from pomegranate peel completely inhibited the pathogen at different intervals of time (0, 12, and 24 h) between treatment and pathogen inoculation on fruits maintained at 22–24 °C and high relative humidity (RH). This extract may represent a valuable alternative to control postharvest fungal rots in view of its high efficacy because of the low cost of pomegranate peel, which is a waste product of processing factories.

An amplicon metagenomic approach based on the ITS2 region of fungal rDNA was used to identify the composition of fungal communities associated with different strawberry organs (leaves, flowers, immature and mature fruits), grown on a farm using management practices that entailed the routine use of various chemical pesticides. ITS2 sequences clustered into 316 OTUs and Ascomycota was the dominant phyla (95.6%) followed by Basidiomycota (3.9%). Strawberry plants supported a high diversity of microbial organisms, but two genera, Botrytis and Cladosporium, were the most abundant, representing 70-99% of the relative abundance (RA) of all detected sequences. According to alpha and beta diversity analyses, strawberry organs displayed significantly different fungal communities with leaves having the most diverse fungal community, followed by flowers, and fruit. The interruption of chemical treatments for one month resulted in a significant modification in the structure of the fungal community of leaves and flowers while immature and mature fruit were not significantly affected. Several plant pathogens of other plant species, that would not be intuitively expected to be present on strawberry plants such as Erysiphe, were detected, while some common strawberry pathogens, such as Rhizoctonia, were less evident or absent.

The fungal diversity associated with leaves, flowers and fruits of olive (Olea europaea) was investigated in different phenological stages (May, June, October and December) using an implemented metabarcoding approach. It consisted of the 454 pyrosequencing of the fungal ITS2 region and the subsequent phylogenetic analysis of relevant genera along with validated reference sequences. Most sequences were identified up to the species level or were associated with a restricted number of related taxa enabling supported speculations regarding their biological role. Analyses revealed a rich fungal community with 195 different OTUs. Ascomycota was the dominating phyla representing 93.6% of the total number of detected sequences followed by unidentified fungi (3.6%) and Basidiomycota (2.8%). A higher level of diversity was revealed for leaves compared to flowers and fruits. Among plant pathogens the genus Colletotrichum represented by three species (C. godetiae syn. C. clavatum, C. acutatum s.s and C. karstii) was the most abundant on ripe fruits but it was also detected in other organs. Pseudocercospora cladosporioides was detected with a high frequency in all leaf samples and to a less extent in ripe fruits. A much lower relative frequency was revealed for Spilocaea oleagina and for other putative pathogens including Fusarium spp., Neofusicoccum spp., and Alternaria spp. Among non-pathogen taxa, Aureobasidium pullulans, the species complex of Cladosporium cladosporioides and Devriesia spp. were the most represented. This study highlights the existence of a complex fungal consortium including both phytopathogenic and potentially antagonistic microorganisms that can have a significant impact on olive productions.