Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) a winter multipurpose oilseed crop for the Mediterranean region: Lesson learnt from on-farm trials
Introduction
In the Mediterranean region only winter cereals, i.e. wheat (Triticum spp.) and barley (Hordeum vulgare), are extensively grown with an autumn cycle, without any feasible alternatives at large scale, mainly in relation to specific environmental conditions and well-established agronomic practices. So, differently from the rest of Europe, in the Mediterranean region winter oilseed rape (Brassica napus L. var. oleifera) is only seldom grown due to its susceptibility to drought, poor adaptability to soils with low fertility, and the lack of specific breeding programs for this area. Thus, Mediterranean farmers mostly rely on cereals as winter crops, this making weed management highly challenging to protect crops from herbicide-resistant weeds (i.e., Lolium spp.) and high build-up soil-borne diseases inoculum in the soil (i.e., Fusarium spp.). Furthermore, the limited number of winter crop options makes the situation for organic farmers even more complicated, being crop diversification is one of the cornerstones of organic practices to reduce weed and disease pressure and promote yield. To meet the needs of Mediterranean farmers some new winter crops are trying to enter their typical cropping systems but the agronomic knowledge of these new species is still very limited. In relation to the domestic shortage of vegetable oil and protein, some of the new winter crops suitable for the Mediterranean region are oilseeds, such as camelina (Camelina sativa L. Crantz), carinata (Brassica carinata L.), and more recently safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.). Safflower is a native species of Near East Asia, and it was firstly reported in Europe 5800 BCE (Marinova and Riehl, 2009). It belongs to the Asteraceae family, like sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.), the most widespread oilseed crop in the Mediterranean basin. Differently from the latter, safflower is tolerant to low temperature and could grow with an autumn/winter cycle in such environment. This trait, together with the other traits of interest such as the resistance against bird predation, the negligible seed losses due to shattering (Mayerhofer et al., 2011) and the early soil cover of winter-sown crop with reduced risk of N-leaching and soil erosion, confers safflower an outstanding potential to become a potential winter oilseed crop for the Mediterranean climate. The feasibility to grow safflower with a winter cycle prevent, or at least dramatically reduce, the possible occurrence of drought stress at flowering stage, which is the only one very sensitive in this species (Koutroubas and Papakosta, 2010, La Bella et al., 2019). Furthermore, safflower is a multi-purpose crop being able to source natural red (carthamin) and yellow dyes from its petals (Patanè et al., 2020), but also oil (≈35–40%) and protein (≈20%) from its seeds (Zanetti et al., 2013). Recently breeding effort has led to the selection of high oleic safflower hybrids (Golkar and Karimi, 2019), which are more suitable to biobased applications (Nogales-Delgado et al., 2021), thus further promoting the potential of this crop as a non-food alternative to sunflower, possibly expanding further the growth basin of oilseed crops in Mediterranean Europe, particularly under North Mediterranean climatic conditions (Metzger et al., 2005). High oleic oils have increased oxidation stability (Merrill et al., 2008), compared with other vegetable oils, and they adapt well to several well-established chemical processes, able to source various biobased products, such as biolubricants, bioherbicides, bioplastics, etc. (Nogales-Delgado et al., 2021, Zhu et al., 2016).
The future scale up and diffusion of a new crop in a new environment needs to encompass the design of sustainable cropping systems, combining empirical and scientific knowledge (Leclere et al., 2018, Toffolini et al., 2016). At this scope a multi-year and multi-location trial has been established across eight different sites across Italy, in Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany regions, with the aim to assess the productive potential of the crop, and to demonstrate its feasibility at farm level, since all the trials were run under real operation conditions by local farmers.
Section snippets
Site characteristics and agronomic management
The commercial safflower high oleic variety, CW99OL (provided by MAS Seeds Italia, Italy), was tested in eight farmers’ field trials during multiple growing seasons (see Table 1 for details on the growing year/site), in different pedo-climatic conditions of central and northern Italy. Fields were located in hilly and plain areas of Emilia Romagna and Tuscany regions, within an area ranging from 43°27–44°32" N latitude, and 10°18–11°28" E longitude. The cultivation sites of Tuscany were located
Meteorological conditions and crop cycle length
The safflower variety, CW99OL, confirmed its wide environmental plasticity and suitability to be grown as a winter crop in north and central Italy, even in marginal land. It completed its growing cycle in about 190 days in Emilia Romagna, while the cycle was significantly shorter in Tuscany (mean 145 days), but the differences in GDDs accumulated from sowing to harvest were negligible across regions (~1850 GDD, Table 3). Thus, the variation in growing cycle duration, coupled with similar GDD
Discussion
Mediterranean farmers, mostly relying on winter cereals, generally in monoculture, are searching for low input and alternative winter crops that can diversify their current cropping systems and promote agricultural sustainability. Cropping system diversification is one of the main principles of agroecological transition, although local references about potential new species, such as alternative oilseed crops, is almost lacking, particularly under real on-farm conditions. So, in the present
Conclusion
Safflower, and in particular when grown with a winter cycle, appeared to be a feasible alternative to winter cereal monoculture for northern and central Italy. Particularly when considering that the present study includes only on-farm trials, carried out by local farmers, who were for the first time approaching this new oilseed crop. Thus, the value of the present study, beside the promising productive results achieved, is for demonstrating how easy could be the technical scale up of a crop
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Federica Zanetti: Formal analysis, Writing – original draft, Writing – review and editing. Luciana G. Angelini: Conceptualization, Project administration, Supervision, Validation, Resources, Writing – original draft, Writing – review and editing. Sara Berzuini: Investigation; Methodology, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review and editing. Lara Foschi: Methodology, Data curation, Writing – review and editing. Clarissa Clemente: Formal analysis, Methodology, Writing – review
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
This study is part of the PS-GO project “Coprodotti per BioRAFfinerie – COBRAF” grant number 20/2017, funded by PSR 2014–2020 of Tuscany Region".
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