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Conservative Precision Agriculture: an assessment of technical feasibility and energy efficiency within the LIFE+ AGRICARE project

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2017

Donato Cillis ,
Andrea Pezzuolo ,
Francesco Marinello ,
Bruno Basso ,
Nicola Colonna ,
Lorenzo Furlan  and
Luigi Sartori
Donato Cillis
Affiliation:
TeSAF, Department of Land, Environment, Agriculture and Forestry, University of Padova, Viale dell’Università 16, Legnaro, Italy
Andrea Pezzuolo*
Affiliation:
TeSAF, Department of Land, Environment, Agriculture and Forestry, University of Padova, Viale dell’Università 16, Legnaro, Italy
Francesco Marinello
Affiliation:
TeSAF, Department of Land, Environment, Agriculture and Forestry, University of Padova, Viale dell’Università 16, Legnaro, Italy
Bruno Basso
Affiliation:
Department of Geological Sciences, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA
Nicola Colonna
Affiliation:
Unità Tecnica Sviluppo Sostenibile ed Innovazione del Sistema Agro-Industriale - ENEA
Lorenzo Furlan
Affiliation:
Veneto Agricoltura, Settore Ricerca Agraria, Viale dell’Università 14, Legnaro, Italy
Luigi Sartori
Affiliation:
TeSAF, Department of Land, Environment, Agriculture and Forestry, University of Padova, Viale dell’Università 16, Legnaro, Italy
*
† E-mail: andrea.pezzuolo@unipd.it
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Abstract

The integration of conservation agriculture with the benefits of precision farming represents an innovative feature aimed to achieve better economic and environmental sustainability. The synergy between these principles was assessed through a technical feasibility and energy efficiency to define the best approach depending on different agricultural systems, spatial and temporal field variability. The study compares three conservation tillage techniques supported by precision farming with conventional tillage in a specific crop rotation: wheat, rapeseed, corn and soybean. The preliminary results show a positive response of precision farming in all the conservation tillage systems, increasing yields until 22%. The energy efficiency achieves highest level in those techniques supported by precision farming, gaining peak of 9% compared to conventional tillage.

Keywords

conservation tillageenvironmental sustainabilitytechnical feasibilityenergy efficiency
Type
Tillage and Seeding
Information
Advances in Animal Biosciences , Volume 8 , Special Issue 2: Papers presented at the 11th European Conference on Precision Agriculture (ECPA 2017), John McIntyre Centre, Edinburgh, UK, July 16–20 2017 , July 2017 , pp. 439 - 443
Copyright
© The Animal Consortium 2017 

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