Martina Grattacaso

Università degli Studi di Siena | UNISI · Department of Life Sciences

Soil microbiota is a crucial component of agroecosystem biodiversity, improving plant growth and providing important services in agriculture. However, its characterization is demanding and expensive. In this context, cross-taxon analyses are useful to detect organisms that are surrogates of other taxonomic groups. Here, we evaluated whether arable...

Potato is the fourth most widely consumed staple food in the world. This study investigated the effectiveness of 0.2% wood distillate (WD), a biostimulant derived from the pyrolysis of waste plant biomass, in boosting the nutritional quality of potato tubers. The results showed that application of WD significantly increased the content of soluble s...

Cross-taxon analyses are important to detect organisms that are surrogates of other components of biodiversity. However, multi-taxonomic surveys can be challenging, expensive and time-consuming. To our knowledge, no studies investigated cross-taxon congruence between vascular plant and soil microbial communities in arable ecosystems. Thus, in this...

The aim of this study was to provide, for the first time, data on the concentration of potentially toxic elements (PTEs) in soils and bulbs of elephant garlic (Allium ampeloprasum L.) cultivated in Valdichiana, a traditional agricultural area of Tuscany, Italy. Bulbs of elephant garlic and soil samples were collected in four cultivation fields and...

Wood distillate (pyroligneous acid) can be successfully applied in agriculture to increase crop quality and productivity with a lower risk for the environment respect to synthetic chemical herbicides, pesticides or fertilizers. However, the effects of wood distillate on the environment and biota are still under investigation, depending on biologica...

Treatments of crops with additives to increase their productivity may pose environmental risks and induce negative effects also on non-target organisms. In this study, we investigated the potential effect of chestnut wood distillate (pyroligneous acid) used in agriculture, on the accumulation of trace elements in aquatic plants. As a model species,...