Evolution of Smart Strategies and Machines Used for Conservative Management of Herbaceous and Horticultural Crops in the Mediterranean Basin: A Review

Abstract

Preserving soil quality and increasing soil water availability is an important challenge to ensure food production for a growing global population. As demonstrated by several studies, conservative crop management, combined with soil cover and crop diversification, can significantly reduce soil and water losses. The aim of this review is to evaluate the spread of smart solutions to perform conservation agriculture (CA) well in the Mediterranean Basin, taking into account the evolution of the strategies and the machines used to perform conservative tillage systems in different contexts in the last 30 years, as well as the effects induced by their adoption on the productivity of herbaceous and horticultural crops, weed control and economic feasibility, in comparison with those obtained utilizing conventional techniques based on soil inversion.

Autonomous Mowing and Complete Floor Cover for Weed Control in Vineyards

“…The results regarding the primary energy consumption estimation highlight that the AM system provides for a more sustainable vineyard floor management, corroborating findings reported by Magni et al [28]. Moreover, vineyard floor management does not require daily mowing; thus, a single autonomous mower can be employed to manage different sectors of a vineyard, further improving autonomous mowers working efficiency and overall energy savings [10]. As shown in Tables A5 and A6 (Appendix A), the summer drought strongly decreased both the floor canopy height and weed cover percentage, requiring a lower use of the autonomous mower.…”

“…Intensive agricultural practices are typical of vineyard management, thus it is crucial to find more sustainable production processes. The adoption of cover crops (CC) is a simple strategy of conservation agriculture that may improve vineyards sustainability [8][9][10]. Indeed, to date it is well known that CC enhances soil quality [3][4][5]8,9] and carbon sequestration [11], facilitating machinery passage [12] and increases microbial, vegetal and animal biodiversity [13][14][15][16].…”

Innovative Living Mulch Management Strategies for Organic Conservation Field Vegetables: Evaluation of Continuous Mowing, Flaming, and Tillage Performances

“…It is well known that this type of practice exploits negative effects such as water and organic matter losses, increased CO 2 emissions, nitrate leaching, excessive soil compaction and erosion, and biodiversity reduction [11]. Shallow (~15 cm), non-inversion tillage and no-tillage are thus becoming more common in European organic farming systems [12] to contrast conventional tillage drawbacks. Nevertheless, reduced or no-till practices, when constantly implemented over time, have been shown to promote weed encroachment, especially for perennial weeds [13], which may create a very challenging scenario.…”

Sustainable Crop and Weed Management in the Era of the EU Green Deal: A Survival Guide

“…As for weed management, conservation agriculture (CA) refers to the bare minimum soil disturbance by applying reduced tillage, choosing diversified crop rotations, and using cover crops and residues to manage emerged weeds. The conservative agronomic practices are preferred by farmers due to the reduced costs in time, labor and fuel compared to the conventional practices [85]. Although CA provides desirable positive traits to agroecosystems, including reduced greenhouse gas emissions among others, it may lead to significant alterations in weed flora by promoting either the dominance of annual or perennial weeds, grasses or broadleaves and small-or large-sized weed seeds [86].…”