Luciano Cavani

University of Bologna | UNIBO · Department of Agri-Food Sciences and Technologies

The use of livestock manure as agricultural soil amendments is a significant source of ammonia emissions and nitrate leaching. Anaerobic digestion of manure can yield to solid and liquid by-products usable as fertilizers that can limit these negative impacts. They could be further supplemented with plant growth-promoting microorganisms (PGPM) to im...

The slaughterhouse and meat industry are worldwide rapidly growing and produce billions of tonnes of organic wastes annually. These materials can be used to produce biogas through anaerobic digestion and the resulting digestate represents a potential source of organic carbon and nutrients that could be applied to the soil as organic fertilizer. The...

The slaughterhouse and meat industry are worldwide rapidly growing and produce billions of tonnes of organic wastes annually. These materials can be used to produce biogas through anaerobic digestion and the resulting digestate represents a potential source of organic carbon and nutrients that could be applied to the soil as organic fertilizer. The...

The academic history of soil science in the Emilia Romagna Region dates back to the beginning of XIX century and sees its first master in Filippo Re (1763–1817). Filippo Re was holder of the first public chair in Agriculture in Bologna. Several illustrious people, such as Carlo Alberto Pichat (1799–1878) and Gino Cugini (1852–1907), then took over...

Adequate plant nutritional status and soil fertility preservation can be achieved through sustainable agricultural management techniques. The challenge of intensive orchard cultivation, besides the risk of nutrient decline, is to prevent the loss of soil fertility that could lead to soil degradation with a consequent negative impact on yield and fr...

Agriculture can play a primary role in the context of nutrients recovery by promoting the use of organic fertilizers (OFs). In order to use them efficiently, it is necessary to predict the nitrogen (N) bioavailability, which is a challenging matter due to the different physical-chemical characteristics of commercially available OFs. This study aims...

Society is constantly striving to achieve a high enough level of protection for human health and the environment, including animal and plant health (COM, 2000). In most cases, policies making it possible to achieve this high lev�el of protection can be determined on a satisfactory and acceptable scientific and technical basis. However, when there...

Organic management aims to maintain and/or enhance the soil quality by adopting crop rotation, reduced tillage, and application of organic fertilizers. Several studies highlight the advantages of organic management in terms of soil quality and soil fertility, the key themes in sustainable agronomy. The aim of this study was to understand whether th...

Agricultural land abandonment is an emerging problem in European Union (EU), and about 11% of agricultural EU land is at high risk of abandonment in the coming 10 years. Land abandonment may have both positive and negative effects in ecosystems. Due to the potential for land abandonment to increase soil fertility, the study of vegetation succession...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the in situ characterization of organic matter (OM) within soil macroaggregates, and to assess the relationships between OM characteristics and macroaggregate size indicating different OM stabilization mechanisms. Optical micro-morphological investigations, coupled to SEM-EDS (scanning electron microscop...

Research on the gut microbiome may help with increasing our understanding of primate health with species’ ecology, evolution, and behavior. In particular, microbiome-related information has the potential to clarify ecology issues, providing knowledge in support of wild primates conservation and their associated habitats. Indri (Indri indri) is the...

Here, we investigated the possible linkages among geophagy, soil characteristics, and gut mycobiome of indri (Indri indri), an endangered lemur species able to survive only in wild conditions. The soil eaten by indri resulted in enriched secondary oxide-hydroxides and clays, together with a high concentration of specific essential micronutrients. T...

Understanding the complex relationships among soil quality, crop productivity, and management practices would help to develop more sustainable agricultural production systems. In this study, we investigated the combined effects of crop rotations and fertilization treatments on soil quality and crop yield in a long term (about 50 years) field experi...

The objective of this experiment was to valuate, after 14 years, the impact of annual compost applications on micronutrient and potentially toxic trace elements on nectarine tree uptake and soil fertility. The study was performed in the Po valley, Italy, on the variety Stark RedGold (grafted on GF677). Since orchard planting, the following treatmen...

A leaching experiment was designed to study the effects of a commercial nitrification inhibitor containing nitrapyrin on nitrification, microbial nitrogen (N) immobilization, and nitrate leaching. Soil columns were treated with 100 mg N kg −1 from pig slurry, cattle slurry, and anaerobic digestate in a mixture with or without the nitrification inhi...

Spreading of manure on agricultural soils is a main source of ammonia emissions and/or nitrate leaching. It has been addressed by the European Union with the Directives 2001/81/EC and 91/676/EEC to protect the environment and the human health. The disposal of manure has therefore become an economic and environmental challenge for farmers. Thus, the...

Canal dredging and shaping produce considerable amounts of sediments whose reuse on- and off-site depends on their pollution level. This study explores the potential of a calcium chloride washing to remove potentially toxic elements (PTEs) from a freshly dredged calcareous sediment and to affect the aggregate stability of the washed sediment. The a...

The search for sustainable source of N, the need of soil organic matter restoration, along with the call for recycling of organic wastes has led to a rise of the use of organic fertilizers. The aim of the present experiment was to evaluate: the effectiveness of compost application as a N fertilizer, the impact on N distribution in soil and plant an...

The aim of the present study was to compare the quantity and the type of carbon (C) stored during the 14-year lifetime of a commercial nectarine orchard ecosystem fertilized with mineral or organic fertilizers. The study was carried out in the Po valley, Italy, in a nectarine orchard of the variety Stark RedGold, grafted on GF677 hybrid peach × alm...

Phenol oxidases (POs) are a group of soil extracellular oxidoreductase enzymes, which are involved in oxidative processes related to nutrient cycling. This class of enzymes has multiple functions at both the organism and ecosystem level and can trigger either positive or negative feedback loops between soil organisms and soil organic matter. The pu...

Protein hydrolyzates (PHs) are a well-known group of plant biostimulants that are obtained by thermal, chemical, enzymatic or mixed hydrolysis from animal or plant sources. PHs are mainly applied to plants with the aim to improve their nutrition level, stimulate metabolism, and increase resistance to abiotic stress. Chemically, the PHs are a mixtur...

This study investigated the effects of two soil moisture levels (SM) (30% and 70% soil available water) and three harvests (90 days, 118 days, and 151 days after seeding) on sweet (S506) and fiber (B133) sorghum genotypes under rain-sheltered conditions. Juice and bagasse-derived ethanol and their sum (EtOHBJ, EtOHB, and EtOHJ+B, respectively) were...

The use of herbicide such as glyphosate is a common practice in viticulture to limit nutrients and water competition between vine/weed plants. However, the impact of such herbicide on the resulting grapes juice quality and, later, on wine fermentation has not yet been proven. In this work, grapes of Vitis vinifera L. cv Gewu¨rztraminer harvested fr...

This study aimed at investigating the degree of interference of high soil copper (Cu) contamination when an old vineyard is converted into a protected area. This study was performed within an intensive agricultural system; it was organized into a two-factorial nested design to analyze the impact of management (conventional vs re-naturalized orchard...

In Brazil, the tanning industry generates large quantities of waste. This country occupies a significant position as a producer of hide - especially bovine leather. The solid residue is often discarded in the environment without treatment, implying environmental problems and energy waste. Typically, control and industrial solid-waste management in...

A legislação ambiental brasileira sobre os efeitos de alguns elementos químicos descartados no solo ainda é muito recente, especialmente no que diz respeito às várias transformações de diferentes tipos de cromo que podem ser usados em conjunto com fertilizantes feitos de restos de couro. Este fato é principalmente devido à falta de dados experiment...

Compost capability of restoring or enhancing soil quality depends on several parameters, such as soil characteristics, compost carbon, nitrogen and other nutrient content, heavy metal occurrence, stability and maturity. This study investigated the possibility of relating compost stability and maturity to water-extractable organic matter (WEOM) prop...

In this work a residue of dry-batch anaerobic digestion (DB) from the organic fraction of municipal solid waste, its composted homologous (CDB), and a municipal solid waste compost (MSWC) were characterized for their main physico-chemical traits and biological stability [oxygen uptake rate (OUR)]. These were then compared in soil incubations at 200...

We investigated the potential of microplate-scale fluorometric soil enzyme assays to differentiate plots under contrasting long-term organic and mineral N fertilization regimens to determine the relevance of this analytical approach to soil quality related studies. Enzymes involved in the breakdown of cellulose and hemicellulose showed maximum acti...

La respirazione del suolo, che include processi di tipo autotrofo (respirazione radicale) ed eterotrofo (ossidazione di sostanza organica), costituisce il maggior flusso di carbonio (C) tra suolo e atmosfera rappresentando fino al 60% dell’emissione totale di C. Nei meleti, le micorrize formano una simbiosi mutualistica obbligata con le radici e po...

The study examined the interrelationships between chemical and microbiological quality indicators of soil and their ability to differentiate plots under contrasting fertilization regimes. The study was based on a long-term field experiment established on an Udic Ustocrepts in 1966. The soil was cropped with maize (Zea mays L.) and winter wheat (Tri...

Biomass crops deserve increasing interest among renewable energy sources. In this work we tested the biomass produced by Arundo, Switchgrass and two sorghum hybrids (B 133 and Trudan Headless), all grown without irrigation at moderate fertilization level, compared to irrigated, well fertilized Maize. The methane yield of the five crops was assessed...

Two different biosolids were obtained composting anaerobic (A) and aerobic (B) municipal sewage sludge (SS) with rice husk. Higher amounts of SS (1:1 v/v) could be used in this composting process than in conventional ones. The two biosolids were characterized by chemical analysis and compared with a conventional green manure plus municipal solid wa...

The annual production of organic wastes in the so called "developed countries" reaches many decades of tons per year. These wastes are of agro-industrial and municipal origin, mainly in solid or semi-solid form and are rich in organic carbon, macro (i.e., nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium) and micronutrients. On the other hand, soils, especially in...

Tannery land plaster (TLP) is a byproduct of lime hydrolysis of leather shavings. Its use in agriculture (organic C ≈ 17%, N ≈ 6% dm) could represent an alternative to landfill or incineration, but the high Cr(III) content (≈5% dm) makes it necessary to evaluate the effect on soil biochemical properties. TLP was therefore added at the rates of 220...

A category of chromium (Cr)-containing fertilizers is represented by the fertilizers deriving from byproducts of tanning process. Their use is widespread because of their good agronomic response due to the high content of slow release or- ganic nitrogen (N) and carbon (C). They do not represent an environmental hazard because only the non-toxic for...

The use of organic matter from compost to promote the catalytic photodegradation of micropollutants by solar light appears to be environmentally promising. However, quantitative evaluation of the photodegradation potential of the compost is needed. Our goal was to measure the formation rate of hydroxyl radicals and singlet oxygen, two strongly oxid...

Three blends formed by: (i) food processing waste (CP(FP)), (ii) waste water sewage sludge (CP(WW)), and (iii) their mixture (CP(FP+WW)), blended with tree pruning as bulking agent, were composted over 3 months. During composting the blends were monitored for the main physical-chemical characteristics: temperature, oxygen saturation level (O(2)%),...

Humic substances are natural compounds abundantly present in the environment. They play a significant role in the natural attenuation of pollution in surface water due to their capacity to generate reactive species upon solar light excitation. Finding physico chemical parameters related to this property would be of a great help in the prediction st...

Humic acid extracted from the A horizon of a Chernozem soil and their different molecular size (MS) fractions obtained by SEC–PAGE were investigated using thermal (TG–DTA), spectroscopic (DRIFT) and isotopic (δ13C) analyses. Moreover, the molecular structure of the high temperature stable fraction (residues above 400 °C) was studied by DRIFT spectr...

Peat humic acid was fractionated by tangential ultrafiltration into six nominal molecular weight (NMW) fractions, HA5-10, HA10-20, HA20-50, HA50-100, HA100-300 and HA > 300, which were purified by dialysis using a 0.5 kDa membrane. The absorbing and emission properties of the separated fractions were compared and their ability to generate singlet o...

Protein hydrolysed fertilizers (PHFs) are currently used to stimulate plant metabolism, mainly through foliar application, and are proposed for use as pesticide adjuvants. However, the effects of PHFs on pesticides upon irradiation are unknown. Here, several herbicides and model compounds were irradiated with simulated solar light in the presence o...

Two protein hydrolyzate–based fertilizers (PHFs), one from alfalfa (AH) and one from meat flour (MFH), were studied chemically and biologically. AH and MFH revealed a different degree of hydrolysis and a different amino acid composition. The biostimulant activity was investigated using two specific and sensitive bioassays of auxins and gibberellins...

Humic-like acids (HLA0, HLA70, HLA130, HLA730) were extracted from composts obtained from sewage sludges and trimmings after 0, 70, 130 and 730days of composting, respectively. In addition, HLA130 was fractionated using SEC-PAGE set-up. Fluorescence spectroscopy revealed that HLA0 was the only sample to contain emission bands characteristic of prot...

Humic acids (HA)-like extracted from compost at the beginning (t(0)) and after 130 days of composting (t(130)) were fractionated by coupling size exclusion chromatography to polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SEC-PAGE). HA-like fractions with the same molecular size (MS) and electrophoretic mobility were pooled and further characterised by analyti...

This study investigated the interactions of CrIII and CrVI present as free metal ions or as organic CrIII (Cr-L) with a Ca-polygalacturonate (Ca-PG) network. Ca-PG networks were treated with solutions of chromium (CrIII and CrVI) at different concentrations at three different pH values. The Cr-L complex were obtained by water extraction of hydrolys...

Three blends formed by: agro-industrial waste, wastewater sewage sludge, and their mixture, blended with tree pruning as bulking agent, were composted over a 3-month period. During the composting process the blends were monitored for the main physical and chemical characteristics. Electrofocusing (EF) was carried out on the extracted organic matter...

The objective of the present work was to investigate in a field experiment the quantity and quality of rhizodeposits of different parental inbred lines (Lo1016 and Lo964, B73 and H99) and hybrids of Zea mays L. Rhizosphere soil was collected after 40 days and several properties were determined: pH, organic carbon, total nitrogen, acid and alkaline...

A Andisol humic acid (HA) was fractioned by preparative size exclusion chromatography and polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis in the presence of denaturising agent (SEC-PAGE setup). Three fractions exhibiting high, medium and low molecular size (MS) and showing well-defined and distinct electrophoretic mobility were obtained. These fractions were an...

Compost (CP) made from 70% ligno-cellulosic compounds and 30% sewage sludge was studied as a component of growing media in a 6-month Philodendron cultivation. CP's agronomic viability was evaluated via four plant-growth media containing 25–50–75–100% CP and white sphagnum peat (WP) in comparison to a commercial substrate with white and black peat....

Three blends formed by: agro-industrial waste, wastewater sewage sludge, and their mixture, blended with tree pruning as bulking agent, were composted over a 3-month period. During the composting process the blends were monitored for the main physical and chemical characteristics. Electrofocusing (EF) was carried out on the extracted organic matter...

The use of protein hydrolysate-based fertilizers (PHF) as adjuvant for pesticides or herbicides has been proposed; however, the behaviors of mixtures of PHFs and pesticides under solar light are not known, and various photochemical reactions may occur. The photosensitizing properties of PHFs were investigated in water solutions (0.8 g of total orga...

Humic-like substances (HLS) were extracted from a mixture of sewage sludges and trimmings (70-30%, w/w) after different times of composting (0, 70 days and 130 days). HLS were analyzed by elemental analysis, UV-visible and fluorescence spectroscopy and also tested for their ability to photosensitize the degradation of Irgarol. The rate of Irgarol p...

The defatted meals from plant seeds containing glucosinolate have been used for biofumigation, but low attention has been paid to their fertilising effect in soils. These meals are rich in organic nitrogen (4-7 % N), phosphorous (5-7 % P2O5) and sulphur (4-5 % SO3) present in organic form which have to be mineralised to became available to plants....

of racemisation of hydrolysed protein fertilisers (HPFs) using an The objective of this study was to determine the degree inexpensive and easy to handle analytical method for qualitative control of the products. Using a polyacrylamide coated capillary and a run buffer containing 0.1 M Tris-borate+2.5 mM EDTA-Na2+0.1% sodium dodecylsulfate+10 mM bet...

Capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) was used for characterisation of soil humic acid (HA) fractions obtained by coupling size-exclusion chromatography with polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, on the basis of their molecular size and electrophoretic mobility. CZE was conducted using several low alkaline buffers as background electrolyte (BGE): 50 m...

The organic matter extracted from peats (P), leonardites (Le) and lignites (Li) was characterised by humification parameters and electrofocusing (EF). The degree of humification and the humification index might be used to distinguish P from Le and Li, but not Le from Li because they showed overlapped values, while the humification rate could be use...

Products obtained by hydrolysis of proteins have been recently used as foliar fertilisers in several fruit growing areas. In this study we have assessed the effects of the rate of protein hydrolysis and that of the N concentration in the sprayed solution on the vegetative growth of potted kiwifruit plants. Protein hydrolysates were obtained by enzy...

Riassunto In questo lavoro sono stati studiati due biosolidi ottenuti dal compostaggio di fanghi di depurazione di acque reflue civili da trattamento sia anaerobico che aerobico. I fanghi sono stati miscelati con lolla di riso nelle proporzioni 85% fango e 15% lolla circa (peso/peso), rispetto al limite del 35% (p/p) attualmente previsto dal D.Lgs....