The University of Milan (UMIL) is a public, multidisciplinary research university characterized by a range of disciplinary fields, moving from life sciences to social and physical sciences. At the top in Italy and Europe for scientific productivity, UMIL is the largest university in the region, with about 65,000 students, and the only Italian university included among the 20 of the LERU, the League of European Research Universities. The University is arranged in 8 faculties, 2 schools, and in 31 research departments, among which, the Department of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences – Production, Territory, Agroenergy (DiSAA) is the reference structure for education and research activities in the field of agricultural sciences in the broad sense. The three pillars of the DiSAA activities are Plant Production, Agricultural Engineering and Animal Sciences with a particular focus on environmental impact and sustainability of farming systems.
SHORT DESCRIPTION
ROLE IN DAIRYMIX
Thanks to the interdisciplinary knowledge of the agricultural and livestock sectors, UMIL team contributes to DairyMix project through:
- The application of modelling solutions for assessing the impact of crop diversification on nutrient circularity and GHG emissions of Dairy Production Systems
- The evaluation of the digestibility of a range of shrub and tree species suited to the implementation of agroforestry systems in northern Italy
- The selection and the characterization of Italian case study farms.
In particular, UMIL leads WP3, coordinating the modelling effort in DairyMix and contributing to tasks on modelling C and nutrient flows of the mixed farming systems with the ARMOSA model. UMIL also contributes to the project with data from Italian case study farms, and to the circularity assessment in T2.2. It also leads T2.3 on suitability of tree and shrub species for forage uses in silvoarable/silvopastoral systems, and contributes to the environmental sustainability assessment and the identification and assessment of synergies and trade-offs in WP4.