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et’s Liberate Diversity! Annual meeting What it is: Since 2005, a European movement for agrobiodiversity has taken shape, driven by the need to address issues related to seeds. This gave birth to the Let’s Liberate Diversity! Forum, aimed at the general public, citizens, and professionals, with the goal of promoting exchange among countries and raising awareness on the subject. For this reason, such events are organized every year in different European cities, fostering participatory and active involvement through horizontal learning. From September 4 to 6, the European Coordination Let’s Liberate Diversity! hosted its 14th LLD Forum at the Agricultural Technical Institute of...

Don’t miss this month’s issue of the GARDENIA monthly magazine  we are featured! Thanks to the article by Samantha Gaiara. Radicchio What it is: Cichorium intybus var. foliosum, family Asteraceae.Origin: Mediterranean Basin, Italy.Characteristics: A biennial herbaceous plant, cultivated as an annual, with variegated leaves or in various shades of red, yellow, or pink; leaves can be long and narrow with an upright habit or rounded and overlapping, forming round heads. In the second year, flowering stalks appear, with intense blue corollas.Growing cycle: From 55 to 150 days, depending on the type and variety. Easy to grow, radicchio is the king...

Radicchio – An Italian Conquers Austria In the spring of 2024, the Experimental Station for Special Crops in Wies, on the initiative of Andrea Pölz (Chamber of Agriculture of Lower Austria) together with the Italian radicchio breeder Andrea Ghedina (Smarties.bio), organized a technical seminar dedicated to radicchio.  It was therefore an opportunity to closely examine a total of 21 varieties. This Italian specialty was mentioned for the first time in the 16th century. It is assumed that the varieties o that time had a much lower percentage of red leaves compared to those cultivated today. It is a fact that...

Typically grown from summer for autumn-winter harvests, numerous types are available on the market, differing in shape, head color, and cultivation cycle length.   The vegetables known as radicchio are cultivated forms of wild chicory (Cichorium intybus), in some cases crossed with a similar plant, endive (Cichorium endivia), also called escarole, which has been native to and cultivated for millennia, especially in the Mediterranean basin. The various species of the genus Cichorium are inter-fertile, meaning they can cross-pollinate and produce fertile seeds. It is largely thanks to this characteristic that the richness of radicchio types exists today. Radicchio is a...