- Padua, Veneto, Italy
- noneedit
- Francesco Marinello ( francesco.marinello@unipd.it ) is Researcher in the field of Agricultural Engineering and Assoc... moreFrancesco Marinello ( francesco.marinello@unipd.it ) is Researcher in the field of Agricultural Engineering and Associate Professor on Agricultural Mechanics, Precision Farming, Applied Statistics and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Agriculture. Research topics: ¶ development and testing of new sensors monitoring soil, plants and machines and enhancement of precision agricultural practices ¶ study, modeling and testing of agricultural tools and machines ¶ agricultural practices impact on environmentedit
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Several researchers stated that climate change effects are arising quickly in the Mediterranean region. Temperature increasing and droughty summers are two of the most common patterns threatening sparkling wines’ grape quality. The... more
Several researchers stated that climate change effects are arising quickly in the Mediterranean region. Temperature increasing and droughty summers are two of the most common patterns threatening sparkling wines’ grape quality. The present study investigated nitrogen nutrition to enhance acidity and preserve the aromatic compound on Vitis vinifera var. Glera for producing white sparkling wine. Half of the one-hectare vineyard placed in northeast Italy was fertigated with nitrogen during summer, while the control half received only mineral fertilization in spring as usual in the area. The trial lasted three years. The grapes’ quality was monitored and compared at harvest. The statistical analysis proved an affordable trend among treatments in which the fertigated grapes showed, on average, more free amino acids (+32%), more yeast assimilable nitrogen (+71%), more acidity (+21%), and lower total soluble solids concentration (−3%) than the control grapes. Energy storage, fruit yield, a...
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Headland and field edges have a higher traffic frequency compared to the field centre, which causes more compaction. Most repeated compaction is located at the field entrance area and headland during machinery turning and material... more
Headland and field edges have a higher traffic frequency compared to the field centre, which causes more compaction. Most repeated compaction is located at the field entrance area and headland during machinery turning and material transporting that takes place during the fertilisation, herbicide laying, and harvesting of fields, which could cause soil structure destruction and yield reduction. In this study, the differences between headland, field edges, and field centre were studied using yield maps and the vegetation indices (VIs) calculated by the Google Earth Engine (GEE). First, thirteen yield maps from 2019 to 2022 were used to measure the yield difference between headland, field edges, and field centre. Then, one hundred and eleven fields from northern Italy were used to compare the vegetation indices (VIs) differences between headland, field edges, and field centre area. Then, field size, sand, and clay content were calculated and estimated from GEE. The yield map showed tha...
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Image analysis using machine learning (ML) algorithms could provide a measure of animal welfare by measuring comfort behaviours and undesired behaviours. Using a PLF technique based on images, the present study aimed to test a machine... more
Image analysis using machine learning (ML) algorithms could provide a measure of animal welfare by measuring comfort behaviours and undesired behaviours. Using a PLF technique based on images, the present study aimed to test a machine learning tool for measuring the number of hens on the ground and identifying the number of dust-bathing hens in an experimental aviary. In addition, two YOLO (You Only Look Once) models were compared. YOLOv4-tiny needed about 4.26 h to train for 6000 epochs, compared to about 23.2 h for the full models of YOLOv4. In validation, the performance of the two models in terms of precision, recall, harmonic mean of precision and recall, and mean average precision (mAP) did not differ, while the value of frame per second was lower in YOLOv4 compared to the tiny version (31.35 vs. 208.5). The mAP stands at about 94% for the classification of hens on the floor, while the classification of dust-bathing hens was poor (28.2% in the YOLOv4-tiny compared to 31.6% in ...
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Bioenergy is being increasingly used worldwide to generate energy from biogas, biomethane, and other biofuels, bringing significant environmental and economic benefits. In Italy, biogas can significantly contribute to the achievement of... more
Bioenergy is being increasingly used worldwide to generate energy from biogas, biomethane, and other biofuels, bringing significant environmental and economic benefits. In Italy, biogas can significantly contribute to the achievement of the renewable energy targets set at the national and European levels. The exploitation of this energy source in a particular area is determined by its environmental and anthropic properties, as well as by the incentive system and the political will of decision makers. This paper analyzes the socioeconomic drivers and natural conditions triggering bioelectricity production in Italian regions. The analysis proposed here was performed in two steps—first, by identifying groups of similar regions for some natural, social, and economic variables, and then by modeling the historical trajectory of bioelectricity production for each identified group with innovation diffusion models. As a general finding, regions pertaining to the same group in terms of natura...
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Research Interests: Agriculture and Livestock
Digital agriculture includes several tools and sensors which take advantage of internet connection. The application of digital agriculture can improve the sustainability of the agricultural system, thanks to the smarter management of... more
Digital agriculture includes several tools and sensors which take advantage of internet connection. The application of digital agriculture can improve the sustainability of the agricultural system, thanks to the smarter management of inputs. Internet connection plays a key role in the utilization of digital tools (e.g. DSS, IoT, cloud computing systems, and telemetry) in agriculture. According to this, a limited and weak internet connection in agricultural areas may reduce the spreading of digital tools and, consequently, reduce the sustainability of the agricultural system. In this study, the 4G internet connection coverage was analyzed in the agricultural areas of Italy, compared with the surface of the main crop types, and then analyzed in terms of its impact on agriculture production (net primary productivity). According to the results, poor internet connection strongly affects heterogeneous agricultural areas, pasture, and wood arboricultural areas. Similarly, a part of the surface classified as permanent crops and non-irrigated arable land is affected by a weak internet connection. The internet connection coverage showed a significant effect on the production of arable crops and tree crops, while its effect is neglectable in pasture and wood arboriculture areas. Such conditions should be analyzed by policymakers to implement policies to fill such a rural digital divide.
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The present study aimed to explore the effects of foliar application of a leonardite-based product on sugar beet (Beta vulgaris L.) plants grown in the field. The approach concerned the evaluation of the community compositional structure... more
The present study aimed to explore the effects of foliar application of a leonardite-based product on sugar beet (Beta vulgaris L.) plants grown in the field. The approach concerned the evaluation of the community compositional structure of plant endophytic bacteria through a metabarcoding approach, the expression level of a gene panel related to hormonal metabolism and signaling, and the main sugar beet productivity traits. Results indicated that plants treated with leonardite (dosage of 2,000 ml ha–1, dilution 1:125, 4 mg C l–1) compared with untreated ones had a significant increase (p < 0.05) in (i) the abundance of Oxalicibacterium spp., recognized to be an endophyte bacterial genus with plant growth-promoting activity; (ii) the expression level of LAX2 gene, coding for auxin transport proteins; and (iii) sugar yield. This study represents a step forward to advance our understanding of the changes induced by leonardite-based biostimulant in sugar beet.
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L’agricoltura si trova ad affrontare le sfide poste dagli obiettivi di mitigazione ed adattamento ai cambiamenti climatici e per raggiungerli deve innovare tecniche e metodi di coltivazione. Tra queste rientrano l’agricoltura conservativa... more
L’agricoltura si trova ad affrontare le sfide poste dagli obiettivi di mitigazione ed adattamento ai cambiamenti climatici e per raggiungerli deve innovare tecniche e metodi di coltivazione. Tra queste rientrano l’agricoltura conservativa e l’agricoltura di precisione i cui principi e metodi sono stati testati ed analizzati, in modo integrato, nel Progetto Life + AGRICARE in una situazione reale, in una azienda sperimentale in Veneto. Da questa esperienza, nasce questo rapporto che vuole ampliare lo sguardo al tema del ruolo dell’innovazione in agricoltura ed offrire al lettore un aggiornamento del contributo potenziale del settore agricolo per aumentare la sostenibilita e la resilienza degli attuali sistemi di produzione alimentare.
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In the last decades, the interest on instrumentation for fast plant canopy characterization has increased, in particular for the possibility of estimation of yield of cultivated plants. The present work investigates the suitability of a... more
In the last decades, the interest on instrumentation for fast plant canopy characterization has increased, in particular for the possibility of estimation of yield of cultivated plants. The present work investigates the suitability of a commercial LAI ceptometer (AccuPAR LP-80) for estimation of leaf yield of white mulberry (Morus alba L.) trees: focus of the present study is the evaluation of accuracy of LAI data collected with the ceptometer in comparison with the real total area of leaves and their weight for each plant. The evaluation has been carried on plants both cultivated in a controlled environment and in open field. Results from analyses show a relatively good grade of accuracy, affected by the geometry of the investigated crop.
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The database contains geo-spatial (block shape, block length/width ratio, mean and max slope) and management (training system, row spacing and headland size) information of 3686 sample vineyards throughout Italian territory.
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Research Interests: Engineering, Agricultural Engineering, Fluorescence, Agriculture, Human Security, and 15 moreInternet of Things, Food Security, Barents Region, Fungal Infection, Digitalization, Infrared Thermography, Hyperspectral, Food system, Exploit, Dynamic Vapor Sorption, Date Palms, Digital farming, Embedded Sensors, Autonomous Robot, and Canopy Temperature
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Agricultural operations, and in particular tillage practices, can have a relevant influence on environmental as well as economic sustainability. The possibility of optimizing tillage operation is thus interesting in order to allow not... more
Agricultural operations, and in particular tillage practices, can have a relevant influence on environmental as well as economic sustainability. The possibility of optimizing tillage operation is thus interesting in order to allow not only improvement of soil structure and cloddiness, but also better management of residues, minimization of soil disturbance and of vertical translocation of organisms, and reduction of energetic costs. The present paper reports on a research study carried out for the development of a power harrow equipped with sensors, which quantify the working depth, the height and load on the levelling bar. Data are managed by an ECU (Electronic Control Unit) which provides a feedback signal for the optimization of the working depth and the position of the levelling bar. Field tests were carried out in order to validate the effectiveness of the approach. For the scope, specific analyses were concurrently carried out to validate the proposed solution, including fuel consumption, power absorption and soil analyses (sieving, three-dimensional roughness and permanence time in the rotary harrow chamber). Finally, it is shown how the proposed approach can help maximization of the constancy of working depth and avoidance of excessive tillage intensity.
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Phytosanitary treatment is one of the most critical operations in vineyard management. Ideally, the spraying system should treat only the canopy, avoiding drift, leakage and wasting of product where leaves are not present: variable rate... more
Phytosanitary treatment is one of the most critical operations in vineyard management. Ideally, the spraying system should treat only the canopy, avoiding drift, leakage and wasting of product where leaves are not present: variable rate distribution can be a successful approach, allowing the minimization of losses and improving economic as well as environmental performances. The target of this paper is to realize a smart control system to spray phytosanitary treatment just on the leaves, optimizing the overall costs/benefits ratio. Four different optical-based systems for leaf recognition are analyzed, and their performances are compared using a synthetic vineyard model. In the paper, we consider the usage of three well-established methods (infrared barriers, LIDAR 2-D and stereoscopic cameras), and we compare them with an innovative low-cost real-time solution based on a suitable computer vision algorithm that uses a simple monocular camera as input. The proposed algorithm, analyzi...
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Measuring the variability of incoming neutrons locally would be usefull for the cosmic‐ray neutron sensing (CRNS) method. As the measurement of high energy neutrons is not so easy, alternative particles can be considered for such purpose.... more
Measuring the variability of incoming neutrons locally would be usefull for the cosmic‐ray neutron sensing (CRNS) method. As the measurement of high energy neutrons is not so easy, alternative particles can be considered for such purpose. Among them, muons are particles created from the same cascade of primary cosmic‐ray fluxes that generate neutrons at the ground. In addition, they can be easily detected by small and relatively inexpensive detectors. For these reasons they could provide a suitable local alternative to incoming corrections based on remote neutron monitor data. The reported measurements demonstrated that muon detection system can detect incoming cosmic‐ray variations locally. Furthermore the precision of this measurement technique is considered adequate for many CRNS applications.