Budbreak date in grapevine is strictly dependent on temperature, and the correct simulation of its occurrence is of great interest since it may have major consequences on the final yield and quality. In this study, we evaluated the reliability for budbreak simulation of two modeling approaches, the chilling-forcing (CF), which describes the entire dormancy period (endo- and eco-dormancy) and the forcing approach (F), which only describes the eco-dormancy. For this, we selected six phenological models that apply CF and F in different ways, which were tested on budbreak simulation of eight grapevine varieties cultivated at different latitudes in Europe. Although none of the compared models showed a clear supremacy over the others, models based on CF showed a generally higher estimation accuracy than F where fixed starting dates were adopted. In the latter models, the accurate simulation of budbreak was dependent on the selection of the starting date for forcing accumulation that changes according to the latitude, whereas CF models were independent. Indeed, distinct thermal requirements were found for the grapevine varieties cultivated in Northern and Southern Europe. This implies the need to improve modeling of the dormancy period to avoid under- or over-estimations of budbreak date under different environmental conditions.

Livestock farming is often addressed as one of the most impactful food production systems on the environment due to GHGE-Green-House Gas Emissions- and land use degradation. However, in the last years there is a growing number of studies that underline the beneficial environmental impacts of extensive livestock farming (i.e., providing ecosystem services, increasing biodiversity and improving carbon and nitrogen cycles), as well as social and economic benefits (i.e., offering alternative and additional forms of income in marginal areas). The multitude of livestock management approaches call urgently for specific tools of assessment in order to inform and orientate policies, farming practices and consumer choices. This study proposes a set of 14 agroecological indicators to assess the state of structural/planned agrobiodiversity in livestock farming systems. Our methodology stems from the already established Indicator-Based Framework to evaluate the sustainability of farming systems and adapted it specifically to livestock farming systems. The set of indicators has been clustered with respect to the ecosystem functions/services they describe. The methodology has been applied and validated on a selection of 12 Italian organic livestock farms and analyzed according to animal breeds and geographical regions. The results highlight that the farms show very positive results with optimal values for all indicators, except for Field Adjacency (FA), Share Species (SS), Share Group (SG). This study highlights how livestock farms could actually provide different ecosystem services in comparison to stockless farms.