Plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) are able to provide cross-protection against multiple stress factors and facilitate growth of their plant symbionts in many ways. The aim of this study was to isolate and characterize rhizobacterial strains under natural conditions, associated with naturally occurring representatives of wild plant species and a local tomato cultivar, growing in differently stressed Mediterranean ecosystems. A total of 85 morphologically different rhizospheric strains were isolated; twenty-five exhibited multiple in vitro PGP-associated traits, including phosphate solubilization, indole-3-acetic acid production, and 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate deaminase activity. Whole genome analysis was applied to eight selected strains for their PGP potential and assigned seven strains to Gammaproteobacteria, and one to Bacteroidetes. The genomes harboured numerous genes involved in plant growth promotion and stress regulation. They also support the notion that the presence of gene clusters with potential PGP functions is affirmative but not necessary for a strain to promote plant growth under abiotic stress conditions. The selected strains were further tested for their ability to stimulate growth under stress. This initial screening led to the identification of some strains as potential PGPR for increasing crop production in a sustainable manner.

The effect of essential oils and individual monoterpenoids on soil-borne fungi, in pure and mixed cultures, in growth media and in the soil environment, was investigated. Essential oils were extracted from lavender (Lavandula stoechas), oregano (Origanum vulgare subsp. hirtum), sage (Salvia fruticosa) and spearmint (Mentha spicata). The monoterpenoids tested were fenchone, carvacrol, 1,8-cineole, carvone, α-pinene and terpinen-4-ol.Their effect was examined on growth and sporulation of Aspergillus terreus, Fusarium oxysporum, Penicillium expansum and Verticillium dahliae isolated from an organic cultivation of tomato. All tested essential oils and individual monoterpenoids inhibited mycelial growth in all fungi and conidial production in most fungi. The strongest inhibitory activity on mycelial growth was exhibited by oregano and spearmint oils and by carvacrol and carvone, respectively their main constituents. The inhibitory activity was clearly fungistatic in A. terreus and F. oxysporum but fungicidal in V. dahliae. On sporulation, clearly stimulatory effects were observed alongside inhibitory ones. Conidial production was always promoted by α-pinene in P. expansum and by sage oil in F. oxysporum. At certain dosages it was promoted by cineole and carvone in F. oxysporum, and by lavender oil in A. terreus and V. dahliae. Experiments with carvone and carvacrol against mixed fungal cultures in a soil environment showed that V. dahliae was the most sensitive and A. terreus the most tolerant of the four fungi. Our results demonstrate strong but divergent effects and selectivity of action of the lower terpenoids on fungal strains that can become serious pests of tomato. Of special importance is the complete inhibition of growth and conidial production of V. dahliae, a pathogen otherwise very resistant to chemical control.

Abstract. The paper presents the first modelling experiment of the European-scale olive pollen dispersion, analyses the quality of the predictions, and outlines the research needs. A 6-model strong ensemble of Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service (CAMS) was run throughout the olive season of 2014, computing the olive pollen distribution. The simulations have been compared with observations in eight countries, which are members of the European Aeroallergen Network (EAN). Analysis was performed for individual models, the ensemble mean and median, and for a dynamically optimised combination of the ensemble members obtained via fusion of the model predictions with observations. The models, generally reproducing the olive season of 2014, showed noticeable deviations from both observations and each other. In particular, the season was reported to start too early by 8 days, but for some models the error mounted to almost 2 weeks. For the end of the season, the disagreement between the models and the observations varied from a nearly perfect match up to 2 weeks too late. A series of sensitivity studies carried out to understand the origin of the disagreements revealed the crucial role of ambient temperature and consistency of its representation by the meteorological models and heat-sum-based phenological model. In particular, a simple correction to the heat-sum threshold eliminated the shift of the start of the season but its validity in other years remains to be checked. The short-term features of the concentration time series were reproduced better, suggesting that the precipitation events and cold/warm spells, as well as the large-scale transport, were represented rather well. Ensemble averaging led to more robust results. The best skill scores were obtained with data fusion, which used the previous days' observations to identify the optimal weighting coefficients of the individual model forecasts. Such combinations were tested for the forecasting period up to 4 days and shown to remain nearly optimal throughout the whole period.

Monitoring biodiversity is of increasing importance in natural ecosystems. Metabarcoding can be used as a powerful molecular tool to complement traditional biodiversity monitoring, as total environmental DNA can be analyzed from complex samples containing DNA of different origin. The aim of this research was to demonstrate the potential of pollen DNA metabarcoding using the chloroplast trnL partial gene sequencing to characterize plant biodiversity. Collecting airborne biological particles with gravimetric Tauber traps in four Natura 2000 habitats within the Natural Park of Paneveggio Pale di San Martino (Italian Alps), at three-time intervals in 1 year, metabarcoding identified 68 taxa belonging to 32 local plant families. Metabarcoding could identify with finer taxonomic resolution almost all non-rare families found by conventional light microscopy concurrently applied. However, compared to microscopy quantitative results, Poaceae, Betulaceae, and Oleaceae were found to contribute to a lesser extent to the plant biodiversity and Pinaceae were more represented. Temporal changes detected by metabarcoding matched the features of each pollen season, as defined by aerobiological studies running in parallel, and spatial heterogeneity was revealed between sites. Our results showcase that pollen metabarcoding is a promising approach in detecting plant species composition which could provide support to continuous monitoring required in Natura 2000 habitats for biodiversity conservation.

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