Carbon footprint of innovative plastic covers used as inset and pest control system in organic apple orchards.

Boschiero M., Casera C., Kelderer M. (2018). Carbon footprint of innovative plastic covers used as inset and pest control system in organic apple orchards. Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Organic Fruit-Growing 2018, 71-77

Recently, physical covers (such as nets, plastic films or sheets) have found a great
application in several high-income fruit cultivations as insect and pest control systems.
Agronomic and economic factors are of primary importance, but environmental impacts
should be considered too, especially GHG emissions and the climate change potential.
Within the project ALT.RAMEinBIO, which aims to find alternatives to copper use in organic
agriculture, the carbon footprint (CF) of different cover typologies (mono-block net, singlerow
net and Keep In Touch®) have been analysed, throughout the life cycle assessment
(LCA) methodology. The aim of this study is to gain a better understanding of the CF of
these covers, to identify which steps along the chain impacts more, and to work towards the
development and promotion of strategies for reducing the CF of pest control operations in
the organic apple production. Our results show that covers requiring high amounts of plastic
and metal components generate inevitably high CF, up to about 1,513.4kgCO2eq per hectare
per year. Against our expectations, the CF of certain covers is even higher than the one of
the actual insects and pests control practice, which implies the spraying of pesticides, the
use of mating disruption and the installation of traditional hail-nets.

Documents

Carbon footprint of innovative plastic covers used as inset and pest control system in organic apple orchards. () Boschiero M., Casera C., Kelderer M. (2018). Carbon footprint of innovative plastic covers used as inset and pest control system in organic apple orchards. Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Organic Fruit-Growing 2018, 71-77

Links

Ecofruit-Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Organic Fruit-Growing 2018 “Ecofruit” is the continuation of the 17 previous meetings. It aims to bring together European researchers and consultants working on topics related to organic fruit growing. “Ecofruit” gives an opportunity to communicate and discuss latest results connected with organic fruit growing with regard to the improvement of the production system.

Details

Activity type

Publication in scientific journal (peer review)

Activity work package

Reduction in pesticide residues

Activity number

Laimburg - WP3 - A95

Activity contact

Dr. Markus Kelderer
Laimburg Research Centre
Laimburg 6 - Pfatten
I-39040 Post Auer (BZ), Italy
[email protected]

Activity partner

Laimburg

Activity country

Italy

Last edit

23-11-2018