Elisa Lorenzetti lentil mixtures + biostimulant

Summary

Cultivar mixtures consist in a certain number of cultivars grown together on the same field: it has been proven that cultivar mixtures could buffer biotic and abiotic stresses, especially in organic and low input farming, through compensation, complementarity and competition processes.
Biostimulants, either plant extracts or microorganisms, aim at increasing crop quality parameters, at enhancing plant nutrition efficiency and plant ability to face abiotic stresses.
Cultivar mixtures were designed with a functional diversity approach: from a collection of lentil genotypes under study at SSSA, we selected two groups of cultivars performing different ecosystem functions, that were proven not be correlated with each other in previous studies.
The collection is composed of Italian lentil germplasm, gathered from local and foreign genebanks, from seed savers associations (e.g. RSR), universities, research centers and lentil farmers.