Life Cycle Assessment of Protected Strawberry Productions in Central Italy

Abstract

Agricultural activities in Europe cover half of the total area of the continent and are simultaneously a cause of environmental impact and victims of the same impact. Horticultural or fruit crops are considered highly intensive and often employ many crop inputs such as fertilizers, pesticides, and various materials. Strawberry falls into this group, and it has grown in acreage and production more than others globally. The aim of this study is to compare the environmental impact of two strawberry cultivation systems in central Italy, a mulched soil tunnel and a soilless tunnel system. The method used to assess the impact is LCA, widely applied in agriculture and supported by international standards. The data used are mainly primary, related to 2018, and representative of the cultivation systems of central Italy. For impact assessment, the method selected was the CML_IA baseline version. From the results obtained, the two systems show a similar impact per kg of strawberries produced (e.g., for global warming: 0.785 kg CO2 eq for soilless, 0.778 kg CO2 eq for mulched soil tunnel). Reduced differences can be observed for the use of crop inputs (greater for the tunnel) and the use of materials and technology (greater for soilless). The mitigation measures considered concern the replacement of the packaging (excluding plastic) and the growing medium of the soilless using perlite and compost from insect breeding.

Assessing the Use of Aloe vera Gel Alone and in Combination with Lemongrass Essential Oil as a Coating Material for Strawberry Fruits: HPLC and EDX Analyses

“…Strawberry (Fragaria × ananassa) is an economically important crop worldwide [1,2]. It has a great nutritional value because it contains minerals, vitamins, flavonoids, and phenolic compounds with beneficial biological properties, for instance antioxidant, anticancer, and anti-inflammatory activities [3,4].…”

New Generation Sustainable Technologies for Soilless Vegetable Production

“…For example, [154] reviewing substrates for use in urban farming, found that perlite has the highest environmental impacts because is a material obtained from open-pit mines, which necessitates substantial energy consumption and a lengthy transportation process. Moreover, horticultural and fruit crops are typically regarded as highly intensive and frequently require numerous inputs, including fertilizers, pesticides, and various other materials, and the benefit of one cropping system over another cannot always be established, as was described by [157] in strawberry cultivated in traditional mulched soil tunnel versus a soilless tunnel system, concluding that, in general terms, tunnel exploits more land and crop inputs (excluding pesticides), while the soilless more technology and building materials, thus, making it difficult to establish which system is more environmentally sustainable.…”

Human Health and Ecosystem Quality Benefits with Life Cycle Assessment Due to Fungicides Elimination in Agriculture

“…In contrast, large quantities of applied fungicides (i.e., Fosetyl-Al and Imazalil) in orange production in Spain resulted in a 90% contribution to freshwater ecotoxicity [11]. Applied fungicides in fruit production contribute to a small extent to climate change [32,[44][45][46][47][48], terrestrial acidification [32,44,45,47,48], and human toxicity [11,[46][47][48] due to low characterization factors of fungicides for these impacts and other contributing environmental releases. Finally, the only distinction between systemic and contact fungicides can be observed for the contact fungicide mancozeb, which is a key contributor to freshwater ecotoxicity and freshwater eutrophication based on [11,32].…”