In the Puglia region, a multicolor landrace called the yellow-purple Polignano carrot has been cultivated since 1940 by local smallholder farmers and has been added to the Slow Food list of traditional products. Composition analyses of these carrots were carried out including carbohydrate assay, inorganic cations, nitrate content, and dry weight of each colour. Besides, antioxidant activity, β-carotene, total phenols and carotenoid content on the full carrots and on the cortex and inner core separated tissues were determined. The same analyses were performed on a commercial carrot cultivar. On average, total glucose, fructose, and saccharose content was 22% lower in the yellow-purple Polignano carrot than in the commercial one. In addition, the highest contributor to the relative sweetness in the yellow-purple Polignano carrot was fructose (43.5%), which affects its wellknown taste, as well as its glycemic index. As for the nutritional parameters, purple carrots showed the highest content in antioxidant activity, total phenols, carotenoids and β-carotene, mainly detected in the cortex.

Globe artichoke (Cynara cardunculus L. subsp. [L.] scolymus Hayek), summer squash (Cucurbita pepo L.) and faba bean (Vicia faba L.) are widely cultivated for their immature inflorescences, fruits and seeds, respectively. Nevertheless, in some areas of Puglia (Southern Italy), other organs of these species are traditionally used as vegetables, instead of being considered as by-products. Offshoots (so-called cardoni or carducci) of globe artichoke, produced during the vegetative growing cycle and removed by common cultural procedures, are used like to the cultivated cardoons (C. cardunculus L. var. altilis DC). The stems, petioles, flowers and smaller leaves of summer squash are used as greens (so-called cime di zucchini), like other leafy vegetables such as chicory (Cichorium intybus L.) and Swiss chard (Beta vulgaris L.). Also the plant apex of faba bean, about 5–10 cm long, obtained from the green pruning, are used as greens (so-called cime di fava) like spinach leaves. Moreover, crenate broomrape (Orobanche crenata Forssk.), a root parasite plant that produces devastating effects on many crops (mostly legumes), is used like asparagus (Asparagus officinalis L.) to prepare several traditional dishes. In this study ethnobotanical surveys and quality assessment of these unconventional vegetables were performed. For their content of fiber, offshoots of globe artichokes can be considered a useful food to bowel. Summer squash greens could be recommended as a vegetable to use especially in the case of hypoglycemic diets considering both content and composition of their carbohydrates. For their low content of nitrate, faba greens could be recommended as a substitute of nitrate-rich leafy vegetables. Crenate broomrape shows a high antioxidant activity and may be considered as a very nutritious agri-food product. Overall, the results of the present study indicate that offshoots of globe artichoke, summer squash greens, faba greens and crenate broomrape have good potential as novel foods, being nutritious and refined products. Their exploitation aiming to the obtainment of labeled and/or new potential ready-to-eat retail products could satisfy the demand for local functional foods.

Two greenhouse experiments were carried out to analyze the shoot sodium (Na+) partitioning, yield, and fruit quality of ‘Cuore di Bue’, a salt-sensitive heirloom tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.), ungrafted or grafted onto interspecific tomato hybrid rootstocks (S. lycopersicum 3 S. habrochaites) ‘Maxifort’ and ‘Arnold’ in 2009, ‘Arnold’ and ‘Armstrong’ in 2010, grown at different salinity stress (SS) levels (0, 20, and 40mM of NaCl in 2009; 0 and 20 mM of NaCl in 2010). In both experiments, an interaction was observed between grafting combinations and SS levels in terms of fruit yield, and fruit juice Na+ content. Under no SS conditions, plant grafted onto ‘Maxifort’ and ‘Armstrong’ provided the highest yield in 2009 and 2010 experiments, respectively. In the presence of 20 mM of NaCl, plants grafted onto ‘Arnold’ provided a marketable yield 23.5% (on average) higher than plants grafted onto ‘Maxifort’ or ungrafted in 2009 and 33% (on average) higher than plants grafted onto ‘Armstrong’ or ungrafted in 2010. The further increase of SS to 40 mM of NaCl considerably reduced the productivity of all grafting combinations. At 20 mM of NaCl, plants grafted onto ‘Arnold’ showed also a higher capacity to modulate shoot Na+ partitioning with respect to ungrafted plants by increasing Na+ accumulation in older leaves (52%) and reducing Na+ content in younger and most active leaves (24%), thus enabling the maintenance of higher K+/Na+, Ca2+/Na+, and Mg2+/Na+ ratios compared with ungrafted plants. Fruit total soluble solids content, titratable acidity, and dry matter were unaffected by grafting at any SS level, whereas under SS, the fruit juice Na+ content of grafted plants was consistently lower (from 19% up to 68%) than that of ungrafted plants. Under moderate SS conditions (20mM of NaCl), the use of rootstock genotypes such as ‘Arnold’ having a particular ability to reduce Na+ accumulation in younger and most active leaves may increase tomato yield and enhance tomato nutritional value by reducing the fruit juice Na+ content.

The “Carota di Polignano” (Polignano Carrot – PC, Daucus carota L.) is a multi-colored landrace, cultivated in the Southern Italy, whose colors range from yellow to purple. Iodine is an essential micronutrient for humans, since it is a key component of thyroid hormones, which regulate the growth and development of the human body. The main source for iodine assumption is represented by diet, but its concentration in the vegetables is usually limited with respect to human needs. To this purpose, two experimental trials (in open field and in greenhouse with a soil-less system) were carried out to enrich PC with iodine. Three levels of iodine (control treatment, C – 0 mg·L−1; low, L – 50 mg·L−1; and high, H – 500 mg·L−1), distributed with foliar spray fertilizations (in both open field and greenhouse) or with nutrient solution (in greenhouse, at the level of 50 mg·L−1) in the form of KIO3 were compared. In open field, the H treatment showed a biofortification that was double and triple respect to L and C treatments, respectively, without influencing color and biometric parameters, such as the fresh and dry weight of roots and DM percentage. In greenhouse, the biofortification done with foliar spray fertilization followed the same trend of open field, while the biofortification by means of nutrient solution was more effective but reached very high levels that had toxic effects on the plants and could be too high for human nutrition. However, the concentrations of iodine into biofortified carrots in open field can allow to satisfy the recommended daily allowance (RDA) by consuming 100 and 200 g of fresh product for the treatment H and L, respectively. Regarding the greenhouse biofortification, the RDA would be satisfied by consuming 200 g of fresh carrots (with the high level of foliar fertilization).

In the latest years the Social Media (or more generally the Web 2.0 tools) have become increasingly important in several aspects of everyday life and, thanks to their pervasiveness, they are used in various areas, including the scientific and academic ones. The importance of such tools have been underlined by several authors. The Social Media, in fact, are used in different activities: academic courses, spreading the results of research projects, informing citizens about initiatives, extracting data from the User Generated Content for particular purpose like, e.g., identify the places of greatest spread of certain diseases, etc. In the context of the our research projects about agrobiodiversity, we are using several Social Media services to disseminate our work and to inform the public. Anyway, the term Social Media points out to all the online technologies and practices used to share content, text, images, video and audio, referring to a plethora of tools. In our case, we refer to Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter and Google Fusion Tables. In this paper, we introduce such tools and discuss the advantages and the opportunities they offer to the academic/scientific community. For Wikipedia, after an introduction about its advantages/ disadvantages, we report how such platform is actually used for academic/scientific purposes, and later we show: i) how it can be used to write/edit entries about species at risk of genetic erosion; ii) in which manner such platform can improve the visits toward a website (referral effect) and iii) how it is possible to create online and printed books (Wikibooks) starting from the entries of Wikipedia platform. For Facebook and Twitter, first we argue about such tools can be used in spreading information about agrobiodiversity, and later we discuss how we are using them and which are the parameters that can provide interesting information in order to see if the communication is done effectively. Finally, we furnish some indications about Google Fusion Tables, an innovative cloud-based tool from Google that allow to create and manage big data online, which does not appear as a traditional database, as it focuses on the sharing and collaboration providing innovative ways to display data on a map. At last, we illustrate how we are using them in order to give greater emphasis to the information and communication about the results of our projects, since the importance of Social Media has recent ly been under l ined by the European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn.

Automatic irrigation scheduling based on real-time measurement of soilless substrate water status has been recognized as a promising approach for efficient greenhouse irrigation management. Identification of proper irrigation set points is crucial for optimal crop performance, both in terms of yield and quality, and optimal use of water resources. The objective of the present study was to determine the effects of irrigation management based on matric potential control on growth, plant–water relations, yield, fruit quality traits, and water-use efficiency of subirrigated (through bench system) soilless tomato. Tensiometers were used for automatic irrigation control. Two cultivars, “Kabiria” (cocktail type) and “Diana” (intermediate type), and substrate water potential set-points (−30 and −60 hPa, for “Diana,” and −30, −60, and −90 hPa for “Kabiria”), were compared. Compared with −30 hPa, water stress (corresponding to a −60 hPa irrigation set-point) reduced water consumption (14%), leaf area (18%), specific leaf area (19%), total yield (10%), and mean fruit weight (13%), irrespective of the cultivars. At −60 hPa, leaf-water status of plants, irrespective of the cultivars, showed an osmotic adjustment corresponding to a 9%average osmotic potential decrease. Total yield,mean fruit weight, plant water, and osmotic potential decreased linearly when −30, −60, and −90 hPa irrigation set-points were used in “Kabiria.” Unmarketable yield in “Diana” increased when water stress was imposed (187 vs. 349 g·plant−1, respectively, at −30 and −60 hPa), whereas the opposite effect was observed in “Kabiria,” where marketable yield loss decreased linearly [by 1.05 g·plant−1 per unit of substrate water potential (in the tested range from −30 to −90 hPa)]. In the second cluster, total soluble solids of the fruit and dry matter increased irrespective of the cultivars. In the seventh cluster, in “Diana,” only a slight increase was observed from −30 vs. −60 hPa (3.3 and 1.3%, respectively, for TSS and dry matter), whereas in “Kabiria,” the increase was more pronounced (8.7 and 12.0%, respectively, for TSS and dry matter), and further reduction in matric potential from −60 to −90 hPa confirmed the linear increase for both parameters. Both glucose and fructose concentrations increased linearly in “Kabiria” fruits on decreasing the substrate matric potential, whereas in “Diana,” there was no increase. It is feasible to act on matric potential irrigation set-points to control plant response in terms of fruit quality parameters. Precise control of substrate water status may offer the possibility to steer crop response by enhancing different crop-performance components, namely yield and fruit quality, in subirrigated tomato. Small-sized fruit varieties benefit more from controlled water stress in terms of reduced unmarketable yield loss and fruit quality improvements.

In order to help conserve genetic resources in agriculture, the Puglia Regional Administration (Southern Italy) planned two specific actions under its 2007–2013 Rural Development Programme. This led to several activities being carried out for some local varieties, including the so-called ‘‘yellow–purple Polignano carrot’’, a multi-coloured landrace grown by a handful of old farmers who act as seed savers. The roots of this landrace, which is grown without fertilizer near the sea, have interesting visual, sensorial and nutritional traits as well as great potential for culinary applications and promising uses as raw material for new food products. However, this interesting landrace is grown on only a few hectares and is regarded as a vegetable at risk of genetic erosion. This note contains information on the yellow–purple Polignano carrot, with the aim of safeguarding some of the indigenous knowledge on the landrace and stimulating research activities that may lead to breeding programmes or commercial production improvement.

The dissemination of knowledge about (agro)biodiversity is a strategic factor in communicating the urgent need to defend and protect biological diversity. Although this can be carried out with various media, in recent years social media (or “Web 2.0”) have begun to assume a prominent role. Of the Web 2.0 services, Wikipedia (Wikimedia Foundation, San Francisco, CA) is one of the most powerful and interesting tools, for several reasons, being collaborative by nature, free of charge, multilingual, and accessible online; in addition, anyone can update the materials therein. Within the framework of the regional project “Rural Development Programme 2007-2013,” our research group, responsible of the collection of historical information and morphological characterization of several vegetable crops considered to be at risk of genetic erosion, proposed the use of Wikipedia as a dissemination tool. The objective of this study was to show how to add/modify articles in Wikipedia for online divulgation and to demonstrate its validity by analyzing some data (pageviews, editing history, and the impact of Wikipedia as a referral toward the project’s institutional website) related to the Wikipedia articles that were added/modified. The article about the landrace variety Carota di Polignano carrot (Daucus carota), created from scratch, received more than 15,000 pageviews in less than 2 years. Referrals from Wikipedia increased the visits to the institutional website by 30%, whereas the bounce rate decreased by 15%. Wikipedia may be a good tool to improve the dissemination of knowledge about (agro)biodiversity either online or offline, and the addition in Wikipedia’s pages of scientific journal references and of links to projects’ website may strengthen the diffusion of scientific knowledge.