Abstract
The Mediterranean region is one of the most vulnerable zones due to water scarcity caused by drought periods and the irregular distribution of rainfall during the year, which may be worsened by global warming. In order to decrease the impact of this climatic phenomenon on the agricultural systems of the area, the SUPROMED (Sustainable production in water limited environments of Mediterranean agro-ecosystem) project (www.supromed.eu), funded by PRIMA, aims to provide a holistic crop-livestock water management system resilient to climate change.
For reaching this goal, the following objectives were proposed: Development of an end-user information technology platform; Integration of several models and tools (MOPECO; PRESUD; DOPIR; IREY; WRF; Agroclimatic-zoning; and Remote monitoring of crops) in the end-user’s platform; Application and promotion of regulated deficit irrigation techniques on vines, fruit trees and annual crops; Validation of the end-user IT platform in tree demo-sites (Spain, Lebanon and Tunisia); Design of a set of good agricultural practices and management techniques to farmers, moreover of an ambitious training program; and Integration of SUPROMED results into water and agricultural policies for large scale deployment.
During the year 1 of the project, 49 plots (15 managed by SUPROMED team) in 27 farms were monitored in the 3 demo-sites in order to demonstrate the positive effect of using the models and methodologies proposed by SUPROMED. Thus, 12 crops (barley, wheat, maize, oat, alfalfa, potato, onion, garlic, vines, almond, olive and pistachio tree) and 32 farmers were involved in the monitoring tasks. As an example, the results on barley in Spain show how SUPROMED reached the best results in all the cases with regards the Leader farmer (same farm and management conditions for a suitable comparison), reaching a slightly higher yield (1.9%), applying a 32% lower amount of water and increasing 26.3% the profitability. One Average farmer (different farm and management conditions, which implies different conditions that may affect to the direct comparison of the results) reached a slightly higher yield and profitability.
However, SUPROMED reached the best results in terms of water footprint and agronomic productivity of nitrogen (environmental indicators) (10% lower and 93.1% higher). These results demonstrate it is possible to reach suitable yields and incomes by doing a better use of the resources and decreasing the impact on the environment. Similar conclusions can be obtained from the results reached in the rest of crops and demo-sites. Workshops and meetings are being used for disseminating these results, promoting the use of the tools, and training farmers and technicians in their use. Data obtained during years 1 and 2 will be used for carrying out a socioeconomic and environmental analysis in order to asses the effect of SUPROMED methodologies at local, regional and Mediterranean basin levels, and advisor policy makers.
Authors
A. Domínguez; J.M. Tarjuelo; A. Martínez-Romero; J.J. Pardo; J. Montero; R. López-Urrea; J.A. Martínez-López; N. Sánchez-García; A. Zidi; R.A. Ferrer; L. López; E. Mino; M. Oueslati; N.R. Dalezios; N. Dercas; I. Faraslis; D. Skepastianos; G. Orfanidis; G. Karoutsos; F. Karam; C. Hashem; H. Hawa; M.B. Nassar; H. El Amami; A. Zaïri; Z. Nasr; A. Chebil; T. Hermassi; R. Nsiri; O. Kheriji; H. Maroufi
Poster Session 4 (Nexus Pilots), Room 1 - 29th September, 09:15 to 10:15
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