Italian Botanist 15: 49-63 (2023) doi: 10.3897/italianbotanist. 15.102133 LW Italian Botanist Published by Societd Botanica Italiana https://italianbotanist.pensoft.net Forest nurseries and the National Recovery and Resilience Plan: the case of Sicily and Apulia (Italy) Raimondo Pardi', Giuseppe Venturella*, Gianniantonio Domina’, Emilio Di Gristina’, Fortunato Cirlincione’, Maria Letizia Gargano! | Department of Soil, Plant and Food Sciences, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Via Amendola 165/A, 70126 Bari, Italy 2. Department of Agricultural, Food and Forest Sciences, University of Palermo, Viale delle Scienze Bldg. 5, 90128 Palermo, Italy Corresponding authors: Emilio Di Gristina (emilio.digristina@unipa.it); Fortunato Cirlincione (fortunato.cirlincione@unipa.it) Academic editor: Lorenzo Peruzzi | Received 17 February 2023 | Accepted 4 April 2023 | Published 24 April 2023 Citation: Pardi R, Venturella G, Domina G, Di Gristina E, Cirlincione EK Gargano ML (2023) Forest nurseries and the National Recovery and Resilience Plan: the case of Sicily and Apulia (Italy). Italian Botanist 15: 49-63. https://doi. org/10.3897/italianbotanist. 15.102133 Abstract In Italy, the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) foresees the planting of ca. 6.6 million trees to establish urban and peri-urban forests in 14 metropolitan cities. This ambitious project requires a signifi- cant number of native trees and shrubs, currently unavailable in Italian public and private nurseries. This survey analyzes the state of forest nurseries in two administrative regions of southern Italy, i.e. the “Filici” forest nursery (province of Agrigento, Sicily) and the Gargano Mountain Reclamation Consortium (prov- ince of Foggia, Apulia), to evaluate the adequacy of Sicilian and Apulian forest nurseries as potential sources of plant material to meet the requirements of the NRRP. The census carried out at the “Filici” nursery revealed the presence of more than 22,000 seedlings in cultivation, comprising 55 species, 26 gen- era, and 26 families. The autochthonous species are 43 (78.2%), while the exotic ones are 12 (21.8%). The Gargano Mountain Reclamation Consortium forest nursery has 190,876 seedlings in cultivation. A total of 80 species are present, belonging to 59 genera and 32 families. Of these, 68 (85%) are native species, 12 (15%) are exotic. An analysis of the plant material being cultivated in these forest nurseries shows the presence of a share of autochthonous species of interest for urban reforestation initiatives, however these are still insufficient in number. Keywords Mediterranean area, native species, shrubs, southern Italy, trees Copyright Raimondo Pardi et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. 50 Raimondo Pardi et al. / Italian Botanist 15: 49-63 (2023) Introduction The Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Mission 2, Component 4, Investment 3.1 “Protection and Enhancement of Urban and Suburban Green Areas” (approved by the EU Council of Ministers on 12 January 2021) foresees a series of widescale actions. The main objectives of the Plan are: a) improve the quality of life and well-being of citizens through the protection of existing green areas and the construc- tion of new ones; b) preserve and enhance biodiversity and ecological processes related to the full functionality of ecosystems; c) preserve and enhance biodiversity, in line with the European Biodiversity Strategy; d) contribute to the reduction of air pollution in metropolitan areas; e) reduce the number of infringement procedures, related to air quality; f) curb land consumption and restore useful soils; g) restore man-made land- scapes and improve protected areas contiguous to metropolitan areas. Besides, Article 4 of Decree-Law no. 111 of October 14, 2019, transposed with amendments into Law no. 141 of December 12, 2019, defines modalities for the design of tree planting in metropolitan cities. Specifically, the Urban and Suburban Forestation Plan establishes a series of actions, focused in the 14 Italian metropolitan cities, to fight air pollution and protect biodiversity. The goal is to establish and expand urban and peri-urban forests by planting about 6.6 million trees. All the initiatives that envisage the planting of trees and new reforestation, especially in urban and peri-urban areas, represent an important driving force for the relaunch of forest nurseries. Starting in the 1930s, the main task of Italian foresters was to reforest vast de- graded areas to counteract the widespread hydrogeological instability of the territory. This situation has favored the proliferation of many forest nurseries, which provided their product free of charge, as required by almost all subsequent Forest Laws until the 1960s (Mariotti et al. 2014; Martini et al. 2022). In the 1970s, the need to reforest Italy's mountainous territory became less pressing, and many forest nurseries ceased their activities (Mariotti et al. 2014). Nowadays, there is again the need and urgency to propose reforestation and tree-planting activities. Besides, there is a marked increase in the demand for ecosystem services to combat erosion, flooding, pollution, and heat is- lands and for green and forested areas, especially near urban populations. ‘The purpose of these initiatives is to increase the quality of life and to focus on issues that correlate “green” areas and health, as widely witnessed in the period of pandemic restrictions (Martini et al. 2022). The awareness that forest nursery activity is essential for the success of any inter- vention aimed at environmental requalification has stimulated interest in better un- derstanding the state of this activity in southern Italy, especially in Apulia and Sicily. Currently, in Apulia, there are 20 forest nurseries distributed in the provinces of Foggia (3), Lecce (9), Bari (5), Taranto (2), and Brindisi (1). Seven regional forest nurseries are managed by the Regional Agency for Irrigation and Forestry Activities (ARIF), while the remaining 13 are private. In 1989, the Sicilian regional government , estab- lished the “Regional Nursery Center”. Currently, the Center includes 16 forest nurser- ies distributed in the provinces of Agrigento (4), Palermo (3), Catania (2), Enna (2), and one in each of the remaining five provinces. Each one is specialized in a specific Forest nurseries and NRRP: the case of Sicily and Apulia (Italy) 51 production. In our study, for Apulia, the forestry nursery of the Gargano Mountain Reclamation Consortium of San Marco in Lamis (province of Foggia) was examined, as it is the most representative nursery in the Regional Register, both for the abundance of forest species produced and marketed and for its internal organization. As regards the Sicilian territory, we examined the “Filici” forest nursery of Cammarata (province of Agrigento). With the establishment of the Regional Nursery Center, it has become the largest forest nursery in terms of plant production in order to meet the needs of the Sicilian Forestry Administration (Candore and Girgenti 2019). The purpose of our survey was to analyze the plants growing in the “Filici” nursery and in that of the Gargano Mountain Reclamation Consortium and to evaluate their adequacy as a potential source of plant material to meet the needs of the NRRP. Case study |: The “Filici” forest nursery The “Filici” forest nursery falls in the municipality of Cammarata (CW-Sicily) in the province of Agrigento (Fig. 1). The nursery was established in the early 1950s at the same time as the reforestation work began on the slopes of Mount Cammarata. The nursery is under the direction of the “Regional Department of Rural and Territori- al Development” and is managed by the Provincial Office Service n°8 of Agrigento. Currently, the staff is represented by one forestry technician who acts as construction manager, one team leader, and three seasonal forestry workers (on a fixed-term basis) with 51, 101, and 151 working days/year depending on their category. In the past, the seasonal workers engaged reached 10 units. The farm area covers a total of 2 ha and has an average slope of 20%. Because of the slope, the entire productive area of the nursery (1.5 ha, about 75% of the entire area) is organized in plots arranged in steps with retaining walls lined with local limestone. Irrigation is done manually or through an automated sprinkler system. ‘The nursery’s main objective is to produce plants that have genetic, morphological, and health char- acteristics that can offer excellent guarantees of rooting, development, and adaptability, thus ensuring success for plantings from scratch or intended for eventual reforestation on state lands. The “Filici” nursery uses seeds collected in forests located in the neigh- boring areas that are included in the list of “Sicilian Seed Woods” established by the Sicilian Region, which lists the forests from where seeds can be taken for forest propa- gation. There are two cultivation practices: with a root ball, the most widely used as the use of containers guarantees planting, and bare-root cultivation, which, however, is little used. Average annual nursery production in the past reached 400,000 seedlings; currently, due to the significant decrease in funds assigned to the nursery, it does not exceed 50,000 seedlings. The average annual mortality is estimated at 10%. Case study 2: The Gargano Mountain Reclamation Consortium Forest The forest nursery belonging to the Gargano Mountain Reclamation Consortium is lo- cated in San Marco in Lamis, (Borgo Celano, province of Foggia) (Fig. 1). It is a public law body under Article 59 of Royal Decree No. 215 of February 13, 1933, Article 826 52 Raimondo Pardi et al. / Italian Botanist 15: 49-63 (2023) Bari .Palermo _——— ~—S—ti—