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Background: The production of seeds for horticultural crops has seen a steady growth since 2006. Onion is one of the most widespread crops that followed this trend until 2013, undergoing a slight decline in 2016. Even though these crops are characterized by high economic value, they present some important issues such as high costs and labor required by some operations such as threshing. The purpose of this study is the evaluation of a patented and dedicated system for mechanical threshing throughout the evaluation of seed quality parameters. Methods: The study was conducted comparing seed samples mechanically threshed obtained from 12 companies and samples of the same batches manually threshed to determine the maximum qualitative potential. The chosen terms for comparison are the most important qualitative parameters included within ISTA standards for seed evaluation. Results: The mechanically threshed seeds show lower values for all the considered quality parameters compared to those found in the control samples. In the same way, there is also greater variability. Conclusions: The introduction of the dedicated mechanical systems allows the reduction of seed processing time while maintaining the quality standards within the limits of merchantability, but for obtaining higher standards, further analysis is necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this study is to assess the impact of frozen green bean production and processing. The analysis and relative information collected regards a medium industry located in the south of Marche region (Italy) and the whole production system, from field to industry, is in a range of about 100 km between Marche and Abruzzo regions. The aim of this study is to assess the impact of 1 kg of frozen green bean for two different cultivation protocols for herbicides and pesticides application in order to assess the possible advantages due to shifting to different field treatments. The baseline scenario (A) considers the application of two herbicides (Pendimethalin and Linuron) and two pesticides (Altacor and Azoxystrobin), the alternative scenario (B) considers one herbicides application (Clomazone) and two pesticides (Emamectine and Azoxystrobin). The analysis has been conducted following ISO 14040 and 14044 on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Product Category Rules for arable crops v. 2.0. LCI (Life Cycle Inventory) and LCIA (Life Cycle Impact Assessment) phase have been performed using LCA software SimaPro® v. 8.2.3.0 with updated databases. The most used databases for this study are Ecoinvent 3 and Agri-footprint, LCI data have been collected through interviews, consulting official documents and company management programs. The system boundaries considered includes crop production, transport to industry plant and industry processing and all the data are referred to 2014 crop season. Crop production LCI considers seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, field activities, yield and relative emissions. Transportations covers distances and payload with empty return. Industry phase considers transformation efficiency, energy, fuels, water. The function of the production chain is to provide frozen green bean, no coproduct or by-product were produced. Residues and product losses from industry processing are managed by anaerobic digestion as waste. Plastics and other wastes from field and industry has been treated by landfill. Data regarding field phase were collected by interviews and consulting official management documents from 43 farms. Data regarding industrial phase have been gathered from automated management systems hardware/software AS/400 (IBM). The LCIA results for 1 kg of frozen green been show an impact of about 0.7 kg of CO2 eq for GWP, 1.9E-4 kg of C2H4 eq kg for PCOP, 3.5E-3 kg of SO2 eq for AP and 1.7E-3 kg of PO43- for EP. The analysis conducted comparing two different solutions of plant protection and herbicides application shows how solution A has a lower impact on ADP, ADP fossil, GWP 100yr, ODP, MEP, PCOP, AP and EP from 0.04% to 11% about. On the other hand, solution B has a lower impact on HTP, FEP, MEP and TEP between 4 and 40%. The analysis conducted shows the impact of frozen green been at industry level representative of medium size processing plant with average technology. The only information available in literature are limited to open field production impact assessment of raw green bean without any kind of industry transformation.. Simply replacing herbicide treatment and one pesticide application, for preventing weed and pest resistance, there is a consistent reduction of impact on different categories for ecotoxicity group without increasing too much the impact on other categories considered. The only exception can be found for ADP category in which the impact of alternative scenario (B) is higher than baseline (A). The reason lies in the lower active ingredient concentration and higher amount of commercial product used for solution B. From the analysis remains evident the contribution on ADP fossil, GWP and ODP due to energy used in industrial phase. On the other side field phase contributes more on ADP, HTP, FEP, AP and EP. • Life cycle assessment of two scenarios for frozen green bean production have been calculated. • Cradle to industry gate approach for a Functional unit of 1 kg of frozen product. • A detailed processes description and relative Inventory have been produced. • A reduction of impact on ecotoxicity is possible replacing pesticides application. • A consistent impact increment was found for abiotic depletion potential resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]