The 11th International Conference on Agricultural and Biological Sciences (ABS 2025)

Abstract: Climate change is reshaping global agricultural systems, posing challenges to crop productivity, global food security, soil health, and water availability by altering weather patterns, intensifying extreme events, and degrading soil health. This invited speech will synthesize findings from recent peer-reviewed studies to explore integrative agronomic strategies that enhance system resilience. A central focus is the management of soil organic matter (SOM), which has been shown to improve soil structure, increase water-holding capacity, and sequester atmospheric carbon. Conservation tillage practices, including reduced and no-tillage systems, are discussed for their role in minimizing soil disturbance, reducing erosion, and fostering the accumulation of SOM, thereby enhancing both productivity and climate adaptation. Moreover, diversified crop rotations—including intercrops, cover crops and agroforestry —are examined as effective tools for optimizing nutrient cycling, breaking pest and disease cycles, and further contributing to soil health.
By integrating these approaches, the presentation will highlight how adaptive soil management, coupled with strategic crop diversification and conservation practices, can mitigate the adverse impacts of climate variability while promoting sustainable agricultural intensification.

Biography: Silvia Pampana has 26 years of experience in agronomy research and is a researcher at the Department of Agriculture, Food and Environment of the University of Pisa, Italy. She is also part of the “Enrico Avanzi” Agro-environmental Research Center of the University of Pisa, dedicated to research on sustainable agriculture and of the Centre for Climate Change Impact, of the University of Pisa, committed to the study of the climate change. Silvia is also the nominated Editor in Chief of Agronomy Journal, the flagship journal of the American Society of Agronomy.
She graduated magna cum laude in agricultural science and then earned a PhD in agronomy and crop science from University of Pisa, the oldest school in the field worldwide (established on March 1st, 1844).
Her understanding of most cropping systems is comprehensive, and she has a clear understanding of rigorous agronomic research. Her research centers around the physiology of yield development in field crops, with special attention to cereals and legumes to identify agronomic strategies for sustainable intensification of cropping systems i.e., allelopathy, intercropping, crop association and rotation, mineral, and organic N fertilization, biosolids, and resilience to abiotic stress, such as
waterlogging.
She has also worked within the European Union focus group on crop associations, including milpa and protein crops to integrate crop associations into existing cropping systems and farm landscapes to increase farm resilience and efficient use of natural resources while reducing the dependency on external inputs.
Silvia is especially committed to raise awareness of the leadership position agronomy holds within science in the search for sustainability.