
Antonio GelsominoUniversity of Reggio Calabria | UNIRC · Department of Agricultural Science
Antonio Gelsomino
Degree in Agricultural Sciences
About
76
Publications
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Introduction
Current research interests:
(i) fertility, functioning and microbial diversity in agricultural soils;
(ii) composting and agricultural use of biogas digestate and composted agro-industrial by-products;
(iii) soil C sequestration and potential emission of GHGs from arable soils.
Prof. Gelsomino leads a highly competitive research group with considerable skill on sustainable crop management, soil analysis, soil microbial diversity assessment, nutrient cycling and GHG emission monitoring.
Publications
Publications (76)
Introduction
In addition to produce biogas, the anaerobic digestion process releases a significant quantity of solid digestate (DG), a C‐rich byproduct suitable both as a soil improver and as a biosorbent of organic and inorganic pollutants. This study considered a mixed biowaste DG and two aerobic DG‐derivatives such as compost (CP) and vermicompo...
In Mediterranean countries characterized by increasingly extended hot and dry periods, olive trees are often conventionally practiced in low fertility and rainfed soils. This study investigated over a 15-month period how conventional tillage, combined with or without incorporated solid digestate, and no tillage affected selected soil properties, ph...
The use of organic fertilizers to replace chemically synthesized fertilizers has assumed an important role in managing plant nutrition and soil fertility. The various organic matrices currently available as organic byproducts and digestates are relatively abundant and have shown promising effects in terms of plant-available nutrients. However, like...
The history of soil science in Calabria is about 60 years old and thus relatively younger than in other Italian regions, although occasional older roots can be traced back to the second half of the twentieth century up to the late nineteenth century. Nonetheless, the contribution to the study of local soils and corresponding applications, often sta...
Nei contesti agricoli mediterranei è ormai consolidato l’impiego di compost di qualità per contrastare i processi di degradazione e favorire il ripristino della fertilità, soprattutto su suoli con limitazioni d’uso o nelle aree sottoposte a forme di gestione intensiva e non conservativa.
L’azienda agricola Terzeria, sita nella piana di Sibari (CS),...
Use of solid agricultural digestate as a substitute for chemical fertilizers in Mediterranean cropping systems can be a valuable approach to improving soil fertility. However, it is important to accurately assess its mineralisation dynamics in order to avoid uncontrolled nutrient releases in agroecosystems. With this aim, a field experiment was con...
Co-digestion of the organic fraction of municipal solid waste (OFMSW) and excess sludge has several benefits especially related to improved methane production and better process stability. In recent years, the presence of biodegradable plastics is increasingly common in OFMSW especially since, as in Italy, biodegradable bags are used for its collec...
An accurate assessment of the absorption and accumulation of soil pollutants by plants is essential to avoid the
entry of toxic compounds into the human and animal food chain. Therefore, this study evaluated the effectiveness
of the amendment of a loamy soil with a mixed compost (CP) and a vermicompost (VC) from digestate,
at doses of 10 t ha 1 (C...
Soil microorganisms are key drivers of soil biochemical processes, but the resilience of microbial communities and their metabolic activity after an extreme environmental change is still largely unknown. We studied structural (bacterial and fungal communities) and functional responses (soil respiration, adenosine triphosphate (ATP) content, hydrola...
Olive orchards cultivation often has to face several soil degradation phenomena like organic matter depletion, reduction of biological activity and generalised loss of fertility. In these contexts, agricultural solid digestate has shown promising results in restoring fertility, although its sustainability has not been fully assessed. Therefore, to...
Changes in climate, land use, and land management impact the occurrence and severity of wildland fires in many parts of the world. This is particularly evident in Europe, where ongoing changes in land use have strongly modified fire patterns over the last decades. Although satellite data by the European Forest Fire Information System provide large-...
A field experiment was carried out to investigate the impact of two improved tillage systems (conventional tillage combined with the incorporation of solid anaerobic digestate, no-tillage) on the prokaryotic community composition in two tree orchard (olive, citrus) soils with contrasting texture, carbonate content, and pH, located in Southern Italy...
Improved soil managements that include reduced soil disturbance and organic amend-ment incorporation represent valuable strategies to counteract soil degradation processes that affectMediterranean tree cultivations. However, changes induced by these practices can promote soil Nloss through denitrification. Our research aimed to investigate the shor...
Digestates, a byproduct of the anaerobic bioconversion of organic wastes for the production of biogas, are highly variable in chemical and biological properties, thus limiting their potential use in agriculture as soil amendment. Using a lab-scale glass reactor, we aimed to assess the feasibility to chemically stabilize the solid fraction of an ana...
Soil structure degradation, declining soil organic matter and nutrient losses are among major drawbacks of continuous conventional tillage with large-scale environmental consequences including decreasing soil productivity, groundwater contamination and greenhouse gases emissions. This becomes especially true in conventionally-tilled Mediterranean c...
The present investigation was aimed to quantify the three principal components of the soil carbon (C) stock, namely inorganic, organic and permanganate oxidizable, in 0-5 cm and 5-30 cm soil layers, of the main Mediterranean agricultural land coverages: olive grove, olive forest, citrus grove, vineyard, arable irrigated, arable rainfed and natural...
Kiwifruit is one of the most appreciated fruits in the world, which organoleptic and nutritional quality is influenced by many factors. Although the contri-butions of different factors individually considered on fruit quality were reported, their simultaneous effect is missing. In this work, a multivariate approach was performed to evaluate managem...
Introduction Intercropping of cereals and grain legumes has been largely reported as an eco-functional practice that can provide several advantages including the improve of land use efficiency and soil fertility, as well as, the reduction of diseases, pests incidence and N losses from the agro-ecosystem (Bedoussac et al., 2015). Intercrops evaluati...
The underlying mechanisms by which legume cultivars contribute to nitrous oxide (N2O) generation are poorly understood. The aim of the present study was to explore the effects of two pea cultivars (Zero4 and Nitouche) intercropped with triticale, with or without wheat (Triticum aestivum) residues incorporation, on soil C and N dynamics, on bacteria...
Use of digestate is increasing attention due to the potential benefits and it can be used as a soil conditioner. Since the impact of soil incorporation of digestate is still poorly investigated, our research aimed at following the lasting effects on soil microbial activity and bacterial community structure, assessing whether the microbial responses...
Conservative management practices are worldwide applied to preserve the soil fer
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tility status in agricultural soils, and this becomes particularly true in Mediterrane
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an croplands where severe climatic conditions and intensive agricultural practices
negatively affect the soil microbiota thus exacerbating the loss of soil productivity
and lan...
Water erosion is the main cause of soil degradation on cultivated lands under Mediterranean climate. In these conditions, ephemeral gully erosion (EGE) is a major contributor to loss of soil productivity due to the big amounts of soil removed from the most productive top-layer. However, only a few studies on the effects of EGE and artificial contro...
Artemisia arborescens L. is a perennial fast-growing Mediterranean shrub, which releases abundant leaf litter upon soil surface throughout the year. The paper aimed to both evaluate the phytotoxic potential and identify major compounds occurring in the plant leaf litter. Following methanolic maceration of the leaf litter, the crude extract was then...
Water erosion is the main cause of soil degradation on cultivated lands under Mediterranean climate. In this conditions, gully erosion is a major contributor to loss of soil productivity due to the big amounts of soil removed from the most productive top-layer. However, only few studies on the effects of gully erosion and artificial controlling mea...
Composted orange waste was tested as a component of perlite-based pot media for growing a widely used citrus rootstock, Troyer citrange. This study also investigated both the leaf and root morphological traits response in Troyer citrange rootstock grown for 173 days in a compost-amended substrate. After 127 days of pot cultivation, leaf number and...
tComposting and thermal drying are amongst the most commonly used post-digestion processes for allow-ing sanitation and biological stabilization of sewage sludge from municipal treatment plants, and makingit suitable as soil conditioner for use in agriculture. To assess the impact of sludge-derived materials onsoil microbial properties, fresh (LAF)...
In soil natually occurring phenolic acids act as allelochemicals and ae involved in several plant-soil interactions. In the present studt a microcosmstyle exPeriment was used to investigate the allelopathic responses induced by individually applied frails-cinnamic and ferulic acids and coumarin on the root system ofmaize seedlings grom for 288 h (1...
In the framework of an interdisciplinary research devoted at increasing soil capacity to act as carbon sink by means of innovative and sustainable strategies (the MESCOSAGR Project), we studied, in microcosm-scale model systems, changes of selected soil chemical properties, soil CO2 efflux, and root morpho-topology after addition of either mature c...
Keywords: C and N pools, depth gradients, denaturing gradient gel electro-phoresis community fingerprinting, microbial biomass, phospholipid fatty acids Introduction. – Soil is a spatially structured, heterogeneous, dis-continuous and dynamic biological system, generally poor in nutrients and energy sources. It harbours a wide spectrum of soil orga...
Grain legume-cereal intercropping can be of a great interest in Mediterranean croplands where severe climatic conditions and intensive agricultural practices exacerbate the process of soil degradation and decline of soil fertility. This study aimed to investigate the impact of leguminous intercrops in soil dynamics of various C and N pools and bact...
We deployed an automated multiplexed soil-respiration (SR) system to monitor partitioned soil CO 2 component fluxes (from roots, mycorrhizal hyphae and heterotrophs) in a UK grassland using a combination of shallow surface (total SR flux), deep (excluding roots and mycorrhizal fungi) and 20-μm pore mesh window soil collars (excluding roots only). S...
A multivariate statistical approach based on a large data set of abiotic and biotic variables was used to classify four contrasting-land-use soils. Soil samples were collected at increasing depth from a calcareous agricultural soil, a temperate upland grassland soil, a moderately acidic agri-cultural soil, and an acidic pine forest soil. Analytical...
The high pH and electrical conductivity values of mature compost from solid wastes of citrus processing plants can severely restrict its use as a constituent of growing media in soilless cultivation. In the present work, addition of phosphoric acid was used as a chemically feasible strategy to lower the pH of mature orange waste compost. The growin...
Changes of the soil CO2 efflux in response to compost addition were investigated for 64 days by a mesocosm-style experiment located in a greenhouse. Each mesocosm was divided internally into four equal sectors and then filled with quartz sand or a soil/perlite mixture amended with increasing doses of orange waste compost (corresponding to 0, 18, an...
Key uncertainties remain in accurately measuring soil respiration, including how the commonly-used technique
of collar insertion affects measured soil and root-derived CO2 fluxes. We hypothesized that total soil respiration
is frequently under-estimated because soil collar insertions sever surface roots, which coupled with the
preferential practice...
Steam disinfestation represents an increasingly attractive strategy to control soil-borne pathogens and weeds both in greenhouses and field crops. Beyond pest control, steam injection has the potential to alter soil nutrient dynamics and composition of bacterial communities. This study investigated the impact of a soil-steaming method (the Bioflash...
Composting represents a valuable strategy for recycling orange processing waste for use as soil conditioner,
provided compost maturity is duly evaluated. Following a 5-month aerobic bioconversion, orange
waste reached an acceptable degree of maturity in terms of humification parameters, absence of
phytotoxicity (determined on test plants according...
A synthetic, water-soluble iron-porphyrin [meso-tetra(2,6-dichloro-3-sulfonatophenyl) porphyrinate of Fe(III) chloride] has recently been proposed as a biomimetic catalyst in the process of oxidative polymerization of terrestrial humic acids, to increase their conformational stability and thus contribute to a reduction of soil CO2 release into the...
The aim of the present study was to develop a mathematical model in attempt to describe the induction and feedback inhibition phases of nitrate uptake in wheat (Triticum durum L. cv. Appulo) seedlings. The model proposed is based on three autonomous, non-linear, and time-dependent differential equations showing good agreement with our experimental...
Soil steaming has become an important practice in commercial greenhouse production as an alternative to chemicals to control soil-borne pathogens. In addition to their effect on pests, due to soil temperature increase, steaming methods may also have an impact on soil chemical properties, on plant nutrient regime and, consequently, on crop yield. Th...
The effectiveness of two amendments for the in situ remediation of a Cd- and Ni-contaminated soil in the Louis Fargue long-term field experiment was assessed. In April 1995, one replicate plot (S1) was amended with 5% w/w of beringite (B), a coal fly ash (treatment S1+B), and a second plot with 1% w/w zerovalent-Fe iron grit (SS) (treatment S1+SS),...
Monitoring the environmental impact of anthropogenic disturbance on soil ecosystem is of great importance for optimizing strategies for soil use, conservation and remediation. The aim of this study was to assess whether and to what extent a long-term, human-induced disturbance could have affected main chemical and biological properties in an agricu...
Soil solarization, alone or combined with organic amendment, is an increasingly attractive approach for managing soil-borne
plant pathogens in agricultural soils. Even though it consists in a relatively mild heating treatment, the increased soil
temperature may strongly affect soil microbial processes and nutrients dynamics. This study aimed to inv...
Soil solarization is a widespread, nonchemical agricultural practice for disinfesting soils, which is often used in combination with organic amendment, and whose action represents an important factor impacting on soil bacterial communities structure and population dynamics. The present study was conducted to investigate whether and to which extent...
Heavy metal availability, microbial biomass and respiration, bacterial diversity and enzyme activity were studied in soils from long-term field experiments contaminated with Mn–Zn- or Cd–Ni-rich sludge, incorporated into soils at two different rates. Soils that never received sludge were used as controls. Microbial biomass C content (BC) and soil r...
The effects of soil management on some microbiological properties and soil bacterial community structure were evaluated. Two field sites with the same soil type, located on the same geographic area adjacent to one other, have received different soil management practices and cultivation. One site has been subjected for 20 years to intensive horticul...
The adsorption of the herbicides quinmerac 7-chloro-3-methylquinoline-8-carboxylic acid (QMe) and quinclorac 3,7-dichloroquinoline-8-carboxylic acid (QCl) on homoionic Fe3+-, Al3+-, Cu2+-, Ca2+-, K+- and Na+-exchanged montmorillonite was studied in aqueous solution. Adsorption data were fitted to the logarithmic form of the Freundlich equation. Ca-...
Abstract The effects of compost addition and simulated solarisation of soil on the survival of Ralstonia solanacearum biovar 2 strain 1609, as well as on the structure of indigenous soil bacterial communities, were analysed. In addition, effects on the invasion of susceptible test plants by strain 1609 were assessed. In untreated soil in microcosms...
The sorption of L-methionine-sulphoximine (MSX) on soil-extracted humic fractions (MW>20,000 Da), and mined clays (kaolinite and montmorillonite)
was studied by a reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography method. The molecule, acting as an inhibitor of glutamine
synthetase activity, was recently used in soil incubation assays for the d...
The kinetic parameters of nitrate uptake (Imax, Km and Cmin) were evaluated in young seedlings of Triticum durum L., cv. Appulo, exposed to nitrate and/or to soil-extracted humic acids (HAs) of different molecular weight. The uptake was enhanced after induction at low levels of nitrate (50 μM KNO3), while it was inhibited after induction at higher...
Bacterial community structure was studied in a Flevo silt loam (FSL) soil microplot, as well as in 15 other soils, by using DNA extraction followed by molecular fingerprinting. Total community DNA was extracted and purified by a direct method, which yielded amplifiable DNA of high molecular weight for all soils. A variable region of the 16S rRNA ge...
l-Methionine-sulphoximine (MSX) is an inhibitor of glutamine synthetase activity which may be used in short-term soil incubation assays for studying its effects on soil N cycling. In order to monitor the fate of MSX in soil a reversed-phase HPLC method equipped with UV-detection has been developed. The fate of the inhibitor was assessed by its reco...
The isotopic dilution technique was used to determine gross N mineralisation and immobilisation rates of two soils (Pistoia, sand–clay–loam, and Romola, sandy) in the presence of l-methionine-sulphoximine (MSX), an inhibitor of glutamine synthetase (GS) enzyme. We hypothesized that a complete inhibition of this enzyme would block N immobilisation a...
A wide range screening method for multiresidue analysis of seventy-seven pesticides (twelve organohalogens, forty-five organonitrogens, eleven organophosphorus and nine pyrethroids) in agricultural products is proposed. Pesticide residues were extracted from crop samples with acetone followed by dichloromethane partitioning. Crop extracts were clea...
An exoenzyme mixture obtained fiom solid-state fermentation of straw by Lentinus edodes was used to treat wheat straw in a rotary drum bioreactor. After 24 h incubation under different conditions (temperature, cellulase inhibition) and subsequent pulping of the pre-treated straw, the ° SR freeness, breaking length, and burst index of the paper hand...
The organic C (EC), total N (EN), anthrone-, phenol- and orcinol-reactive C (ARC, PRC and ORC, respectively), ninhydrin-reactive N (NRN), Folin-Ciocalteu's reagent-reactive C and N compounds (FRC and FRN) and deoxyribose containing compounds (diphenylamine-reactive compounds, DRC) extracted by 0.5 m K2SO4 before (non-fumigated extracts) and after (...
A precise and sensitive method to assay guaiacol oxidase activity in soil is needed. The objective of this study was to set up this method by determining residual guaiacol spectrophotometrically after its extraction from soil with 0.5 M NaOH and 1 M CaCl2 and its separation from reaction products and humic molecules of the soil extract by high-perf...