The Agricultural European Policy aims to introduce oil energy crops in arable fields. While in northern and central Europe Countries several crops was introduced, in southern European  countries is necessary to develop agro-energetic chains for arid arable fields. For that reason EU funded in 2006 the Project “Global Process To Improve Cynara Cardunculus Exploitation For Energy Applications” (Biocard) in which CRA-ING was responsible for developing mechanization solutions. From Cynara Cardunculus is possible to obtain biomass for energy, seeds for oil and pappus for fine cellulose, so harvesting equipment was designed to collect separately the different

biomass fractions. The prototype is an head of a combine harvester able to harvest seeds and leave biomass in windrow that will be subsequently harvested by baling machine in a single operation. In this way the derived particles can be used for different conversions, such as achenes oil for biodiesel production and energy production from the combustion of biomass.