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18th ANNUAL CONGRESS OF THE ITALIAN SOCIETY OF ECOLOGY: INSIGHTS ON ENVIRONMENTAL BIOTECHNOLOGIES

The 18th Annual Congress of the Italian Society of Ecology (SitE) was held in Parma, Italy, between 1 and 3 September 2008. As part of the Congress framework, a session entitled “Ecological sustainability and environmental biotechnologies in decontamination and restoration of polluted sites” was included. The session was chaired by Prof Nelson Marmiroli, University of Parma, and included papers presented by Italian scientists working in the field of environmental biotechnologies, bioremediation and phytoremediation. In total, 13 abstracts were submitted to the Session, 9 as platform presentations and 4 as posters. Considered in the general context of the conference, dedicated to Ecology Emergency and Planning, this number has to be considered exceptionally high, given the current state of Italian research for technologies in decontamination. The speakers came from the academia, equally distributed from Northern and Southern parts of Italy, but the audience also included representatives of companies active in the field of decontamination. One third of the submitted abstracts dealt with application of micro-organisms. In particular, Dell’Anno (Univ. Marche) presented data on autotrophic and heterotrophic bacterial interactions to improve remediation of heavy metals in dredged sediments, and also showed how this bioaugmentation approach can make the process independent from sulphur availability. Magagnini (Univ. Marche) illustrated a situation in lagoon ecosystem where bioremediation of sediments is carried out by stimulating microbial communities with Fe. The populations were monitored through measurement of biochemical enzymatic activities. The same approach was used by Baldantoni (Univ. Salerno) to evaluate the effect of compost amendants on soil biology in experimental plots cultivated with tomato and lettuce. In this work, the authors also reported the effect of compost addition on heavy metal concentrations in edible and non edible parts of the plants, concluding that compost from municipal organic wastes can be extremely beneficial for soil fertility. Several abstracts dealt with phytoremediation applications. Argese (Univ. Venezia) reported about the use of Pteris vittata to capture arsenic in the context of urban environments, a roundabout characterised by heavy traffic load. The field experiments showed preliminary results on both the plant’s tolerance to harsh environmental conditions and also on As accumulation in the fronds. Visioli (Univ. Parma) reported data on Ni accumulation by Thlaspi accessions from different species and in particular from the serpentine sites of Monte Prinzera. The authors correlated the plant performance with genetic variability in the sequences of several candidate genes. This innovative approach