European Union Research Project Biocard: Mechanization Activities Results

Abstract

The Agricultural European Policy aims to introduce oil energy crops in arable fields. While in northern and central Europe Countries several crops was introduced, in southern European Countries is necessary to develop agro-energetic chains for arid arable fields. For that reason EU funded in 2006 the Project "Global Process To Improve Cynara cardunculus Exploitation For Energy Applications" (Biocard) in which CRA-ING was responsible for developing mechanization solutions. From Cynara Cardunculus is possible to obtain biomass for energy, seeds for oil and pappus for fine cellulose, so harvesting equipment was designed to collect separately the different biomass fractions. The aim of the paper is to present the performance of the machine developed during the harvesting of 40 ha of Cynara Cardunculus in 2008. After concluding the prototypic phase, the harvester reached a satisfactory working capacity of 2.10 ha/h and overcame the difficulties already examined the past season, with an increase in the operating working capacity of 33.78%.