Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (MAPs) are broadly cultivated in the Mediterranean but their environmental footprint is not very well studied. In this paper, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was applied to determine the energy balance, carbon and water footprints (CF and WF, respectively) in 50 farms, organic and conventional, where four MAP species were cultivated; spearmint (Mentha spicata), oregano (Oreganum vulgare), rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) and Damask rose (Rosa damascena). The lowest value for energy intensity (EI) was observed for organic spearmint (0.18 MJ/kg fresh weight; f.w.) while the highest for conventional Damask rose (5.80 MJ/kg f.w.). Statistically significant differences were observed in EI between organic and conventional farms for spearmint and Damask rose while no differences were found for oregano and rosemary. The lowest CF was observed for organic rosemary (0.051 kg CO₂-eq/kg f.w.) while the highest for conventional Damask rose (0.463 kg CO₂-eq/kg f.w.). Statistical differences in the CF between organic and conventional farms for the four species followed the same pattern as for EI. Conventional spearmint had the lowest WF (61.5 L of water/kg f.w.) and organic Damask rose the highest (1522 L of water/kg f.w.). Statistical differences between the two management systems were observed only for Damask rose. The 50 farms were grouped according to the values of three indicators (EI, CF and WF) using cluster analysis. Four clusters were identified with 68% of the farms (34) belonging to the low footprint cluster which contained organic and conventional spearmint, oregano and rosemary farms. The other three clusters contained the (16) Damask rose farms, where the inputs were higher in comparison to the other three species and the highest footprint clusters contained conventional rose farms. Our work suggests that MAPs are viable candidates for the implementation of sustainable agriculture in the Mediterranean.

This work studied the effect of composition of powders and water content on mixture quality (MQ) of three binary powder mixtures with good (salt/paprika or salt/sugar) or poor mixing (salt/oregano) behaviour. The mixing behaviour was assessed using coefficient of variation. Results showed that mixture composition did not influence the MQ of sugar/salt and paprika/salt within 20–80% salt content range but it did influence the MQ of oregano/salt with a progressive dis-improvement in MQ with higher oregano content and also for low concentrations of 1% salt. Water content did have an effect on mixing behaviour. When paprika with high water activity (aw) was mixed with salt, the time required to reach good MQ was longer because of the increased cohesiveness and when oregano with high aw was mixed with salt it displayed improved MQ because salt particles were able to stick onto the larger oregano particles and reduced segregation.