Contents lists available at ScienceDirect European Journal of Agronomy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/eja Organic amendment efectively recovers soil functionality in degraded vineyards Claudio Mondini a, ⁎ , Flavio Fornasier a , Tania Sinicco a , Paolo Sivilotti b , Federica Gaiotti c , Davide Mosetti d a CREA Research Centre for Vitiaculture and Enology, branch of Gorizia, via Trieste 23, I-34170 Gorizia, Italy b Department of Agricultural, Food, Environmental and Animal Sciences, University of Udine, via delle Scienze 206, I-33100 Udine, Italy c CREA Research Centre for Viticulture and Enology, branch of Conegliano, via XXVIII Aprile, 26, I-31015 Conegliano (Treviso), Italy d Perleuve s.r.l., via Isonzo 25/1, I-34071 Cormons (Gorizia), Italy ARTICLEINFO Keywords: Land levelling Vitis vinifera Soil organic matter Soil functionality Compost Vine status ABSTRACT The aim of this study was i) to elucidate the impact of land levelling in vineyards on soil fertility and crop development; and ii) to evaluate the efectiveness of amendments in the recovery of soil functionality and vine status in disturbed soils. A feld trial was set up on 2 vineyards located in North East Italy and subjected to land levelling. Four treatments were compared and sampled for 3 years: non-amended undisturbed soil (US); non-amended disturbed soil (DS); disturbed soil amended with vermicompost (VC, 1.5 t C ha −1 y −1 ); disturbed soil amended with vine shoot compost (VS, 4 t C ha -1 y −1 ). Land levelling negatively impacted soil fertility. In particular, soil organic matter (SOM) and extractable N were decreased by about 20 and 55%, respectively, which were refected in signifcant reduction of crop yield and grape quality. Soil displacement had also a negative impact on root spatial distribution and density. Soil amendment was efective in recovering (VC) or enhancing (VS) soil fertility in disturbed soils, in par- ticular by improving water content, SOM, available N and microbial biomass size and activity. Amendments, particularly VS, caused an increase in grape yield, titratable acidity and total N and a decrease of total soluble solids, although diferences were not always statistically signifcant. Our results showed that soil amendment is an efective management for a prompt recovery of degraded soil in vineyards, but a medium- to long-term application of amendments is needed to signifcantly enhance crop status and grape quality. 1. Introduction In Europe most vineyards are grown in low fertility soils, char- acterized by inadequate soil organic matter (SOM) content, water holding capacity and structure. These soils are prone to erosion and present poor soil aeration due to compaction (Schmidt et al., 2014). More recently, this problem has been exacerbated by land levelling (Ponchia et al., 2012), a technique adopted to create new terracing systems to favour mechanization and reduction of costs, especially in hilly vineyards. Land levelling is usually performed with no prior scraping of topsoil, which is the portion of soil having the most part of SOM. Soil organic matter infuences virtually all the soil properties and controls soil agricultural and environmental functions (Janzen, 2006). The consequences of land levelling for soil fertility are important: re- duced carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) mineralization, altered dynamics of available elements and decrease of microbial activity. In particular, soil microbial biomass, representing the active pool of SOM and although encompassing only a limited percentage of it, is widely acknowledged to play a pivotal role in key soil processes relevant for soil ecosystem functions such as cycling of nutrients, decomposition of crop residues and exogenous organic matter, soil decontamination, water purifca- tion, structure formation etc. Soil microorganisms are widely re- cognized to be the driving factor in nutrients transformations and therefore they have a major role in soil fertility and ecosystem func- tioning (Smith and Paul, 1990). Ramos et al. (2007) reported a decrease in SOM up to 50% in https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eja.2018.10.002 Received 14 June 2018; Received in revised form 25 September 2018; Accepted 7 October 2018 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: claudio.mondini@crea.gov.it (C. Mondini), favio.fornasier@crea.gov.it (F. Fornasier), taniasinicco@virgilio.it (T. Sinicco), paolo.sivilotti@uniud.it (P. Sivilotti), federica.gaiotti@crea.gov.it (F. Gaiotti), davide.mosetti@gmail.com (D. Mosetti). European Journal of Agronomy 101 (2018) 210–221 1161-0301/ © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. T