Soil priorities for Italy. A multi-stakeholder consultation, barriers and opportunities for research system

Soil can play a primary role to address key global challenges, such as climate change mitigation and adaptation; ensuring food security and human livelihood; preserving ecosystem services, biodiversity and water quality. Nevertheless, identifying and addressing key soil challenges requires a cross cutting and tailored approach that considers local context and needs. On the other hand, advancing soil science research is essential for bridging the gap between societal needs and state-of-the-art on soil knowledge. This study summarizes the outcomes of multistakeholder consultations carried out in Italy with the aim to identify and prioritize the key soil challenges and the main knowledge barriers/gaps that prevent to address and the main opportunities to overcome them. Soil sealing, soil erosion and the losses of soil organic matter were identified as the most relevant soil challenges in the Italian context, as their incidence is already alarming in the country. The study showed that there are many areas of soil research improvement to respond adequately to the existing soil challenges in Italy.