State of the art and methodological recommendations in the application of Life Cycle Assessment in nut and fruit arboriculture

High levels of specialisation, diversification and the complexity of orchard systems inevitably affect the methods involved in applying an environmental impact assessment method to fruit productions and agroecosystems. It is therefore important to study the work that has already been done regarding the standardisation of methods in order to make appropriate comparisons. This communication critically reviews studies that apply Life Cycle Assessment in fruit production and distribution systems published till 2015 in the scientific literature (considering peer-reviewed papers from international journals and conference proceedings).The setting of several methodological parameters contribute to substantial differentiation in the structure of LCA applications in fruit production systems, leading to significantly different results. Indeed, although scientific literature on the topic is recent and not particularly extensive, there are already many different ways of conducting LCAs in orchards. The aim of this communication is to propose a framework for selecting the best parameters for an LCA application in fruit production systems according to the objective of the study. The particular characteristics considered were: objectives, system boundaries, functional unit, data origin, allocation procedures and the environmental impact assessment method used. Furthermore, the review highlights peculiarities and strengths, limits and problems in the application of LCA to fruit production systems, such as the modelling of the orchard system and the definition of allocation strategies. Due to the relatively high variability in study cases and approaches, it was not possible to identify any one method as being better than the others. However, remarks on methodologies and suggestions for standardization are given and the environmental burdens of fruit systems are highlighted.