"Most suitable areas for the cultivation of herbaceous energy crops in Umbria region (Italy) and biomass production evaluation"

Nowadays arable land in Umbria region is occupied mainly by winter wheat, sunflower, forages, sugar beet and tobacco. Considering changes coming from new European Union Agricultural Policy some of this crops will bring reduced incomes to the farmers and so they could be partly substituted by energy crops. For this reason it could be interesting to find out which are the most promising areas to cultivate herbaceous energy crops, such as sorghum, triticale, miscanthus, giant reed, corn, sunflower, sugar beet. Most suitable areas can be found through pedoclimatic indexes and will be defined as the areas in which environmental variables meet physiological requirements of the energetic crop. Once these areas have been found it is possible to calculate how much biomass they can produce. This depends on energetic crop genetic characteristics and on the influence of environment. Experimental studies have been performed by the Biomass Research Centre to assess and predict productivity of herbaceous energy crops in different environments. Three experimental fields are under study in the Umbria region and the data coming from these will be used to predict productivity in the different vocated areas. Also energetic characteristics are under study: the moisture content and lower heating value of the different biomasses have been measured. Given three energetic conversion techniques: gasification and/or pyrolysis, anaerobic digestion, direct combustion it will be estimated how much energy (Power and/or heat) can be produced, by the previously determined vocated areas. Distributing vocated regional areas among the different commons of Umbria Region it will be possible to assess the quantity of dedicated biomass that could be available for the different commons.