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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Agroecology and Ecosystem Services
Volume 8 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2024.1457462
This article is part of the Research Topic Increasing Resilience through Multi-Species Intercropping, Agroforestry and Mixed Grazing Crop-Livestock Systems View all 10 articles

The role of mixed orchards in carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation in Mediterranean environment

Provisionally accepted
Sotiria Ioannidou Sotiria Ioannidou 1Vassilis Litskas Vassilis Litskas 2Menelaos Stavrinides Menelaos Stavrinides 3*Ioannis N. Vogiatzakis Ioannis N. Vogiatzakis 4,5
  • 1 Agricultural Research Insitute (Cyprus), Aglantzia, Nicosia, Cyprus
  • 2 VL Sustainability Metrics LTD, Independent researcher, Lefkosia, Cyprus
  • 3 Cyprus University of Technology, Limassol, Limassol, Cyprus
  • 4 Open University of Cyprus, Latsia, Cyprus
  • 5 Department of Soil, Plant, and Food Sciences, Faculty of Agricultural Science, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Mixed orchards, planted with different species of tree crops, are a form of a traditional cropping system that has been practiced for millennia in the Mediterranean and provides the important ecosystem service of carbon sequestration. We used six allometric equations (M1-M6) based on existing literature and data from 49 orchards for estimating tree total biomass (TB) and carbon sequestration, based on C content of dry biomass. A species/geographically-specific equation (M1), a genus-specific (M2), a genus/geographically-specific forest equation (M3), two generalized forest allometric equations (M4 and M5) and a generalized agricultural landscape equation (M6) were compared and yielded an average of 15.42, 10.80, 11.39, 6.12, 6.66 and 9.88 Mg C ha -1 , respectively. Organic and conventional orchards at the same productive stage did not differ significantly from each other in CO2 sequestration (CO2seq) per tree per year (10.42 and 10 kg CO2eq, respectively). Equation M1, was considered as the most representative (species and environment) for use in perennial Mediterranean orchards. The use of allometric equations is proposed as a simple, effective, and efficient method to estimate CO2 sequestration from mixed orchards using easily measurable biometric characteristics of the trees. The findings are important for the future estimation of CO2 stocks of agricultural landscapes.

    Keywords: orchards, Agricultural management practices, Carbon Sequestration, climate action, Cyprus

    Received: 30 Jun 2024; Accepted: 16 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Ioannidou, Litskas, Stavrinides and Vogiatzakis. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Menelaos Stavrinides, Cyprus University of Technology, Limassol, 3036, Limassol, Cyprus

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.