Techniques and technologies on short rotation coppice production.

Supported by favourable grant schemes, in the last seven years north-Italian farmers have planted over 5000 ha of Short Rotation Coppice, mainly in the one- and two-year rotation systems. The plantations are established with selected poplar clones and their success relies on the integrated development of all different production stages, from planting to harvesting, facilitated by private service corporations. To date, Italian SRC is a commercial business, steadily gaining momentum. On good fields, yields can reach or exceed 30 green tonnes/ha year and the farmers can sell their product to 15-20 EUR/green tonne, facing cropping costs that are only a fraction of those incurred with traditional food crops. Harvesting and transport can be performed within the 25 EUR/green tonne cost limit, meeting the 45 EUR/green tonne delivered price target, offered by the local power station. Currently, there is a strong interest towards extending rotation age and diversifying tree species, in order to increase product quality and to exploit less fertile sites. That implies harvesting larger and harder trees, which may prove challenging for existing harvesting units. On this purpose new harvesting units have been proposed on the market. These machines were tested on poplar but also on experimental SRC plantations of robinia and willow. Gross machine productivity ranged from 15 to 50 green tonnes per scheduled machine hour and harvesting costs were in the range of 14 EUR/green tonne. The studies conducted also highlighted the excellent performance of robinia, which proved superior to poplar on the same fields, and reached yields over 15 dry tonnes/hectare year. A further advantage of robinia is the low moisture content at harvest, which may help solving the fuel moisture issues inherent to the current single-pass cut-and-chip harvesting systems.