CREA - Consiglio per la Ricerca in Agricoltura e l’analisi dell’economia agraria, Italy

The Consiglio per la Ricerca e l’Analisi dell’Economia Agraria (CREA) is a national research body operating under the supervision of the Italian Ministry of Agriculture in the field of research in agriculture, agro-industry, food, fisheries and forestry. The CREA will be involved in DiverIMPACTS with four research centres (Agriculture and Environment, Cereals and Industrial crops, Vegetable and Flower crops, Policy and Bioeconomy) focusing on research activities in agro-ecology, plant physiology, soil quality assessment, sustainable soil fertility management and organic farming, agricultural policy, bio-economy, technical and environmental performances of cropping-based systems.

Role in the project

CREA acts as co-leader in WP4 in the assessment of relevant performance and monitoring indicators of crop diversification strategies and as task 6.5 leader in evaluation of current agro-environmental policy in terms of their effectiveness to promote or to impede agricultural systems diversification. CREA is also involved in WP3 carrying out one the field experiments (namely, FE 9) of project network aimed at evaluating the agronomic and environmental performances of a diversified vegetable organic cropping system in which strip-cropping is additionally implemented to an existing rotation that already includes multiple cropping. Moreover, CREA takes part in the identification of success and failure factors of crop diversification in Italy as well as the testing of diversified cropping systems and the development and implementation of standard measurements across its case studies.

Key persons involved

• Dr. Stefano Canali, CREA-AA, Team leader, co-leader work package 4, leader task 4.1
• Dr. Gabriele Campanelli, CREA-OF
• Dr. Pasquale Nino, CREA-PB, Leader task 6.5
• Dr. Massimo Palumbo, CREA-CI