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Sustainability issues have driven academic researchers towards the definition of methodological tools to assess the impacts derived from products and services and to make them more ecologically friendly, economically profitable and socially suitable, and whose results have to be clear and understandable to a broad public. In the evaluation of complex socio-environmental systems, like agricultural ones, uncertainty often arises and the quality of decision processes can be a high concern. This paper presents the conceptual and methodological framework of an Italian research project entitled "MIMeSMAS", i.e. Multidisciplinary and Innovative Methodologies for Sustainable Management in Agricultural Systems. Through a multidisciplinary, multi-methodological, systemic and participatory approach, the project attempts to define an integrated approach for the assessment of environmental, economic and social sustainability of innovative agricultural practices in Mediterranean areas. The project activities are carried out by four Italian research institutions in order to bring together agronomic, hydraulic and mechanical expertise and to conduct a combined implementation of Life Cycle methodologies (LCA, LCC and s-LCA) and multi-criteria analysis tools. The approach is applied to assess and rank alternative cropping systems scenarios; results are expected to help optimising the management of soil, water and energy macro-systems of perennial crops (olive), horticultural crops (artichoke) and dedicated energy crops (giant reed). In this paper the theoretical concept of the project, the preliminary results of project's activities linked to the identification of experimental trials scenarios and to the definition of specific indicators are presented.

Summary The world production of dates has more than doubled over the last two decades. Presently, the industrial sorting of dates is a difficult operation, affected by a high level of losses. As a consequence, the objective of this article is to study the variety discrimination capabilities of Fourier Transform‐Near Infrared (FT‐NIR) reflectance spectroscopy for post‐harvest sorting purposes. The same methodology was tested on six commercial date varieties named Estamaran, Kabkab, Mazafati, Piarom, Deglet nour and Zahedi. For each cultivar, 100 fruits were analysed using the FT‐NIR spectrometer, subsequently characterised by destructive measurements. A multivariate analysis of the FT‐NIR spectra appears a feasible tool for cultivar discrimination and even to estimate the soluble solid content (SSC) and dry matter (DM) of dates at their optimal harvesting conditions. FT‐NIR, as a non‐destructive techniques, could be a suitable way for on‐line screening of different dates varieties.