Attention to urban agriculture (UA) has recently grown among practitioners, scientists, and the public, resulting in several initiatives worldwide. Despite the positive perception of modern UA and locally grown, fresh produce, the potential food safety risks connected to these practices may be underestimated, leading to regulatory gaps. Thus, there is a need for assessment tools to evaluate the food safety risks connected to specific UA initiatives, to assist practitioners in self-evaluation and control, and to provide policy makers and scholars a means to pursue and assess food safety in city regions, avoiding either a lack or an excess of regulation that could ultimately hinder the sector. To address this aim, this paper reviews the most recent and relevant literature on UA food safety assessments. Food safety indicators were identified first. Then, a food safety assessment framework for UA initiatives was developed. The framework uses business surveys and food analyses (if available) as a data source for calculating a food safety index for single UA businesses and the whole UA landscape of a given city region. The proposed framework was designed to allow its integration into the CRFS (City Region Food System) toolkit developed by FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), RUAF foundation (Resource Centres on Urban Agriculture and Food Security) and Wilfrid Laurier University.

In addition to the general interest connected with investigations on biodiversity in natural contexts, more recently the scientific community has started considering occurrence of endophytic fungi in crops in the awareness of the fundamental role played by these microorganisms on plant growth and protection. Crops such as olive tree, whose management is more and more frequently based on the paradigm of sustainable agriculture, are particularly interested in the perspective of a possible applicative employment, considering that the multi-year crop cycle implies a likely higher impact of these symbiotic interactions. Aspects concerning occurrence and effects of endophytic fungi associated with olive tree (Olea europaea) are revised in the present paper.

There is increasing concern regarding global warming and its severe impact on the farming sector and food security. Incidences of extreme weather conditions are becoming more and more frequent, posing plants to stressful conditions, such as flooding, drought, heat, or frost etc. Especially for arid lands, there is a tug-of-war between keeping high crop yields and increasing water use efficiency of limited water resources. This difficult task can be achieved through the selection of tolerant water stress species or by increasing the tolerance of sensitive species. In this scenario, it is important to understand the response of plants to water stress. So far, the response of staple foods and vegetable crops to deficit irrigation is well studied. However, there is lack of literature regarding the responses of ornamental plants to water stress conditions. Considering the importance of this ever-growing sector for the agricultural sector, this review aims to reveal the defense mechanisms and the involved morpho-physiological, biochemical, and molecular changes in ornamental plant’s responses to deficit irrigation.