Publications by authors named "F Bastida"
Kiwifruit Vine Decline Syndrome (KVDS) has become a major concern in Italy, impacting both plant health and production. This study aims to investigate how KVDS affects soil health indicators and the composition of soil microbial communities by comparing symptomatic and asymptomatic areas in two kiwifruit orchards located in Latium, Italy. Soil samples were collected during both spring and autumn to assess seasonal variations in soil physicochemical properties, enzyme activities, and microbial biomass.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPhosphorus (P) is essential for plants but often limited in soils, with microbes playing a key role in its cycling. P deficiency in crops can be mitigated by applying by-products like sludge and struvite to enhance yield and sustainability. Here, we evaluated the contribution of four different types of fertilizers: i) conventional NPK; ii) sludge; iii) struvite; and iv) struvite+sludge in a semiarid maize plantation to the availability of P and the responses of the soil microbiome.
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- Understanding soil microbial carbon use efficiency (CUE) and its response to temperature is essential for assessing soil's role in climate change.
- The study utilized the O-HO tracer method along a forest transect, finding that climate significantly impacts CUE and temperature sensitivity through various direct and indirect effects.
- In colder forests, CUE decreases with temperature, while in warmer forests, it increases, indicating that microbes are most efficient at their preferred temperatures, which can mitigate carbon loss from soil in favorable climatic conditions.
Article Synopsis
- Plant-soil biodiversity interactions are crucial for terrestrial ecosystems, yet it's unclear which specific topsoil microbial and small invertebrate organisms consistently associate with land plants.
- A field survey of 150 land plant species across 124 locations revealed that these plants only shared less than 1% of the soil organisms, mostly generalist decomposers and phagotrophs, with their presence linked to important functional genes.
- Environmental factors like aridity, soil pH, and carbon content can significantly disrupt the relationships between land plants and soil organisms, potentially impacting soil ecosystem processes in the face of climate change.
(short-spiked canary grass) is considered to be among the most troublesome cereal weeds in Mediterranean areas. A bioeconomic model, based on population dynamics, competition and economic sub-models, was developed to simulate the long-term economic consequence of using herbicide-based strategies: no herbicide application, full herbicide dose (standard rate) and two reduced dose rates (75 and 50% of the standard rate) to control in a biennial wheat-sunflower rotation. Simulation results indicated that only herbicide application at a full dose (90% control) and 3/4 dose (80% control) produced positive economic results, with the full dose being the best strategy (EUR 98.
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