The growing of rape seed (Brassica napus var. oleifera D.C.) and Ethiopian mustard (Brassica carinata
A. Braun) as oilseed crop for biodiesel production in southern Europe has gained new interest,
following the implementation of policies aimed at increasing the production of locally produced biofuels.
The study reported in this paper is part of a feasibility study designed to provide a scientific
assessment on the introduction of oil seed crops in the context of the Mediterranean agro-pastoral
systems of central Sardinia. Locally, the oil seed demand is from a 34 MW electric power station
recently installed by Biopower Sardegna Spa, who funded the study, to supply the local industrial site.
The overall objective of the experiments is also to build a dataset to adapt CROPGRO model of
DSSAT (Jones et al., 2003) to rapeseed. In this paper, we will provide preliminary data from the field
experiments on rapeseed and an overview of the research design
