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Dr. Claudio Porqueddu Traversa la Crucca 3 Italy Webpage: www.cnr.it |
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The Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), or National Research Council, is the biggest research entity in Italy that promotes fundamental and applied research and combines a wide multidisciplinary expertise in several thematic areas, from nanotechnologies to agro-food. CNR employs about 8000 people. It is organized in 7 departments and 115 institutes distributed throughout the national territory. The Institute for Animal Production System in Mediterranean Environment (CNR) has the headquarters located in Naples (Italy) and an operational unit in Sassari (Sardinia, Italy). The mission of CNR focuses on the improvement of the environmental and economic sustainability of animal and farming systems, promoting the development and use of advanced agronomic methods to meet the needs of consumers and markets. CNR studies the Animal Production System in a systemic way, using an interdisciplinary approach and considering the whole production chain, starting from plant/animal productions and ending with the quality of the final food products. The team of the operational unit in Sardinia has an extensive multi-year research experience in grassland improvement in prone-to-drought and rainfed areas in Mediterranean environments. Its main research lines focus on the improvement of productivity and seasonal availability of forage, improvement of pasture quality, seed bank dynamics, evaluation of native germplasm for the multipurpose use (forage, environmental restoration, other uses), ecophysiology of herbaceous species grown in field and in pots, use of mixtures. CNR carries on the field experiments in its own experimental field and in private farms, involving farmers in the evaluation of trial outcomes with a participatory approach.
The Inno4Grass Project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 727368.