METHODOLOGICAL PROPOSALS FOR A QUALITATIVE EVALUATION OF ITALIAN DURUM WHEAT VARIETIES

In the complex frame of the EU agriculture politics, a particular relevant aspect is given by the new regulation on durum wheat production and diffusion incentives. These subsidies are assigned according to a particular indicator (Quality Global Index - QGI), built up through a weighted mean of four qualitative parameters. However, as we are going to show, the actual method used to evaluate QGI could not be statistically correct. In this work we propose, both from a theoretical and an empirical point of view, a comparison between the actual method and a series of alternative ones. A particular emphasis is given to a normalisation criterion, modified in order to properly take into account the asymmetry level observed on the four parameters empiric distributions.