One year monitoring of bud break phenology in a FAIR 202 (Grighine, Sardinia) international field test

Phenology, the study of recurrent biological events and biotic and abiotic factors that determine them, allows to know how a species respond to seasonal environmental events. In phenological traits analysis, the variance components due to the climate effects as well as the genetic one are important. These traits are characterized by high heritability and genetic variability and are considered important adaptive traits, able to influence species distribution and fitness in response to variations of air temperature and water availability. The monitoring of phenology is considered a useful tool to investigate the species adaptability in a climate change scenario.

The Congress is intended as a forum for sharing Mediterranean experiences in the cork industry: from the conservation and sustainable management of cork forests to the aspects of industrial processes and alternative uses to cork stopper production. The Congress is held in Sardinia, an island in the centre of the Western Mediterranean, where many rural landscapes are characterised by cork trees, which thus have environmental and economic value, and, hence also social value. Sardinia is home to approximately 80% of Italy’s cork oak forests. The application of Regulation (EEC) No 2080/92 instituting a Community aid scheme for forestry measures in agriculture and of the following. Regional implementing regulation have seen a marked preference by farmers for cork oak over other tree species: thus about 10,000 ha of cork stands have been planted, in addition to the existing 83,000 ha of specialised cork stands. The Region’s production, which is 5% of global output, covers approximately 50% of the demand from the local processing industry; the rest is covered by regular imports from the Iberian Peninsula, North Africa and nearby Corsica. The presence of a dynamic industry, with processing facilities concentrated in upper Gallura, increases the importance of the supply chain. There are also agro-forestry systems based on the cork oak (wooded pastures similar to the Iberians montados) where the soil is often cultivated with fall-winter grasses for dairy sheep. The Region’s main sheep’s milk product is hard salty cheese (pecorino romano) and fluctuations in the prices of sheep’s milk and natural cork determine the degree of pressure exerted by entrepreneurs on the forests’ structure. Thus, Sardinia constitutes an interesting case study because it features: - Vast forests of cork oaks owned by regional and/or municipal public authorities, managed with sustainable and multifunctional systems, with high-growing trees and certification of the production process - Privately-owned land with limited shrub vegetation to improve cork productivity and control defects caused by excessive humidity - Agro-forestry systems (with beef cattle in Gallura and dairy sheep in Central Sardinia) with high natural and cultural value (HNV) - Large processing industries (Gallura) and small and medium-sized processing enterprises spread across Central-northern Sardinia. The two-day event will focus on the exchange of experiences between the local research and industry players and international players, and will provide an update on rural development policies. It will also provide an opportunity to discuss the guidelines contained in the National Cork Plan currently being drafted on the initiative of the Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies, addressing one of the themes of the First National Conference on Cork held in Sassari in May 1934.