Di recente pubblicazione, sulla rivista open access “Sustainability” (MDPI), il lavoro di ricerca svolto dal CREA AA presso l’azienda Sperimentale Campo 7 a Metaponto. Le attività sono relative al progetto H2020 denominato AgroCycle.

Abstract: The Circular Economy concept implies the re-design of existing production systems in agriculture, by promoting agricultural waste recycling. In an organic zucchini—lettuce rotation, two different agroecological tools were considered: biofertilizer and presence or absence of green

manure (GM+ and GM). In particular, we compared: (i) anaerobic digestate from cattle manure, co-composted with vegetable wastes, with the presence of GM (AD GM+); (ii) olive pomace compost, re-composted, with the presence of GM (OWC GM+); (iii) municipal waste compost with GM (MWC GM+); (iv) municipal waste compost without GM (MWC GM). These materials were tested with a commercial organic fertilizer without GM (COF GM) as a positive control. The objectives were:

(i) assessing the environmental sustainability of biofertilizers through carbon footprint analysis by greenhouse gas—GHG—emissions;

(ii) evaluating the agronomic performance on the vegetable rotation, by energy output assessment. The total carbon emissions of biofertilizers production was 63.9 and 67.0 kg of CO2 eq Mg1 for AD and OWC, respectively. The co-composting and re-composting processes emitted 31.4 and 8.4 kg CO2 per Mg of compost, respectively. In AD the ventilation phase of composting accounted for 37.2% of total emissions. The total CO2 emission values for the two-crop cycles were the highest in COF GMand the lowest in OWC GM+, due to different fertilizer sources.

On the average of the treatments, the input that induced the highest CO2 emission was irrigation (37.9%). The energy output assessment for zucchini and lettuce highlighted similar performance for all the treatments. Our findings demonstrated the validity of the tested processes to recycle

agro-industrial wastes, and the potential of agroecological practices (GM) to mitigate GHG emissions.