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The use of pesticides and fertilizers in agricultural practice is the main source of soil and groundwater contamination. S-Triazines are among the most used herbicides in the world for selective weed control in several types of crops. The homeostatic capability of an agroecosystem to remove a triazinic herbicide, simazine, was assessed in microcosms treated with the herbicide in presence/absence of urea fertilizer. The latter, as well as a fertilizer, is also one of the last by-products before simazine mineralization. The biodegradation, in terms of disappearance of 50% of the initial concentration (DT 50 ), was compared to the degradation and metabolite formation occurring in sterilized soil. Moreover, the bacterial community response was assessed in terms of abundance and community structure by the epifluorescence direct count method and fluorescence in situ hybridization. The results show that the microbial community has a primary role in simazine degradation and that this process is due to the presence of a microbial pool working in succession and of which the metabolism may be modulated by exogenous sources of nitrogen, like urea. The latter influences the degradative pathway with a greater formation and accumulation of the desethyl-simazine metabolite, which is a hazardous contaminant of soil and groundwater ecosystems, as well as its parent compound.

ResumenSe evaluó la patogenicidad y virulencia sobre Dysdercus peruvianus de una cepa de Acremonium y una AbstractWe assessed the pathogenicity and virulence on Dysdercus peruvianus with a strain of Acremonium and one of Scopulariopsis isolated from infected adult D. peruvianus from Mala, Cañete, south of Lima. A strain of Beauveria sp., isolated from Schistocerca piceifrons peruviana from Ayacucho, was also evaluated. Bioassays were conducted on the fourth instar nymphs of D. peruvianus, and the concentrations used were 3,7 x108 , 1,9 x10 8 , 9,4 x10 7 conidia / mL for Beauveria sp., Acremonium sp. and Scopulariopsis sp. respectively. At 20 days after treatment, the highest mortality rates were caused by Beauveria sp. (83,3%) and Acremonium sp. (80%). Scopulariopsis sp. caused a mortality of 23,3%. Acremonium sp. was the more aggressive strain with a lethal time (LT50) of 3,8 days.

The Rural Development Plan (RDP) represent the most important source of contributions and support for the agro-food sector companies in Italy. The European Community planning tool based on a European Structural and Investment Fund (SIE) allows the agricultural and forestry entrepreneurs to undertake projects and investments for the improvement of their companies. During the 2014-2020 RDP program, the Emilia-Romagna region (Italy), promoted a rewarding mechanism to support those companies carrying out Carbon Footprint (CF) study of their product supply chain. The Product Category Rules (PCR) considered in the analysis refers to the PCR "Preserves and Preparation of Meat", UN CPC 2117. Primary data was used for all the life cycle phases (slaughterhouse/sectioning, meat processing and distribution), except for the pig farming phase and the packaging end-of-life scenarios. Moreover, for the breeding stage modelling, processes from the Agri-footprint 2.0 database are used, adapting it to the Italian heavy pigs breeding method. The goals of this study are two: first of all to evaluate the overall impact of the Parma ham P.D.O. on-the-bone and, on the other hand, to analyze how the real accuracy of the data influenced the results. The overall impact is 23.11 kgCO2eq, with the most significant contribution due to the upstream module, in particular for the farming stage (68.4%), in line with other benchmark. Then a sensitivity analysis was performed to assess the effects on the total impact of the economic allocation data in the slaughterhouse stage.

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