**Preface to "Smart Management of Conservative, Organic and Integrated Agriculture"**

Sustainable agriculture is targeted towards achieve food security, while maximizing the socio-economic benefits and minimizing environmental drawbacks. Among sustainable farming practices, organic and integrated farming systems are widely recognized as effective farming systems, in terms of global warming mitigation and contrast to soil desertification. As a matter of fact, certified organic land in Europe has increased by almost 75% in the last decade. Globally, the increasing demand for environmental sustainability, safety and food quality surely encourage farmers to change their agricultural strategies moving from "conventional" (i.e., intensive, market-oriented, agro-industrial systems) to integrated and organic farming. The first step of this transaction is a reduction in the use of external chemical inputs (e.g. mineral fertilizers, synthetic pesticides). However, both organic and integrated farming require a complete shift in the agricultural managemen<sup>t</sup> approach, to fully express their potential. Actually, many farmers converting to organic farming rely on the so-called "Input Substitution Approach", a simplified managemen<sup>t</sup> approach, based mostly upon replacing synthetic agrochemicals with natural substances allowed by the organic farming regulations. Normally, intensive tillage is also practiced for seed bed preparation, organic fertilizer/green manure/crop residue incorporation and, although to a lesser extent, weed management, thus hindering to achieve one of the key objective of organic farming, i.e., to conserve and improve soil fertility. Intensive tillage can deplete soil organic matter, could be responsible for soil erosion through the destruction of soil structure, and can decrease soil biological activity and biodiversity.

On the other hand, conservation agriculture (CA), defined according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) as the combination of reduced soil disturbance, permanent soil cover and diversification of cropping systems, is a rising managemen<sup>t</sup> system reputed to: reduce the risks of erosion and nutrient loss, increase soil organic matter and carbon sink capacity, improve soil fertility and contrast global warming. Reduced and no-tillage systems were developed a few decades ago in conventional agriculture, to pursue these goals, as well as obtain relevant energy and economic savings, by eliminating huge tillage and excessive field traffic. With this aim, many research efforts have been spent to design and realize operative machines able to perform no-tillage in an appropriate and effective way (i.e., no-till drills, planters and trans-planters) and reduced tillage on entire fields or in band (i.e., strip tillage implement). All these machines are equipped with tools suitable to allow a good preparation of the seed-bed and a proper managemen<sup>t</sup> of soil cover. Unfortunately, CA generally relies on the large-scale use of agrochemicals, with a reduction of energy efficiency and an increase in environmental impact. For these reasons, introducing CA techniques into organic farming could be really challenging if compared to integrated farming systems, where the application of agrochemicals is limited, but still allowed.

However, recent studies demonstrated that the application of CA techniques in organic farming could be facilitated by the use of different typologies of mulch (although this solution often resulted in a high increase of cultivation costs, negatively influencing farmers income) and/or by the inclusion of cover crops in crop rotations. Using legume species as cover crops also improves N nutrition of the cash crop and increase soil nitrogen organic pool. For these reasons, in recent times, researchers increased the investigations on cover-crop-based reduced and no-till farming systems, as a sustainable practice to eliminate the reliance on intensive tillage, and maximize the benefits of cover crops and resource use efficiency in organic farming. In these systems, cover crops are often terminated without incorporating residues into the soil, thus leaving a dead mulch, into which the cash crop is planted using appropriate tailor-made operative machines, able to properly work on reduced or no tilled soil covered by dead mulch. This requires the necessity to produce large cover crop biomass, as well as a good managemen<sup>t</sup> of their residues to provide maximum weed suppression and nutrient cycling. Weed managemen<sup>t</sup> and nutrient availability are two factors known to challenge the crops performance in organic and conservative production. As a matter of fact, weed pressure tends to increase, although cover crops can reduce weed infestation during their growth, making a physical barrier consisting of dead mulch on the soil surface, preventing sunlight reaching the soil surface and through allelopathy. However, the important results obtained in many recent researches on the set up of strategies and the design and realization of machines for physical weed control will surely allow one to define valid solutions in all agricultural contests, to solve this "key problem".

In conclusion, in this Special Issue as Guests Editors we decided to take into consideration all the researches concerning with the definition and testing of smart solutions, based on the use of both agronomic strategies and innovative agricultural machinery, related to the proper managemen<sup>t</sup> of organic, integrated and conservation farming systems, taken both alone and together. We are really satisfied with the final results, as the papers published in this SI surely added relevant and innovative knowledge for the smart managemen<sup>t</sup> of organic and conservative agriculture.

However, going into detail, the 10 papers published in this SI concern research on:


**Andrea Peruzzi, Christian Frasconi, Daniele Antichi** *Editors*
