Organic vegetable production in Southern Italy: soil fertility management and fertilisation strategies.

Summary

Despite the importance of the organic sector in Italy, there are still many difficulties in crop management amenable to weed control, plant protection and soil fertility keeping. Concerning this last aspect and focusing attention to the vegetables crops, the subject is even more complex for the intensive cultivations, the difficulty of rotations implementation, etc. To develop research programmes, we have in a preliminary phase carried out, in a representative area in the south of Italy, a survey aimed at better understanding the main characteristics of organic vegetable agrosystems in terms of plant nutrition and fertility maintenance. The picture concerning about fifty farms is presented and discussed.