Project: Improving resilience and food security in 2050 climate through soilless precise agricultural techniques and irrigation with wastewater properly treated by innovative technologies to ensure food safety

Acronym	SECUREFOOD2050 (Reference Number: FOSC-159)
Duration	01/06/2021 - 31/05/2024
Project Topic	SECUREFOOD2050 consortium involves 5 Partners from the public research sector (Italy, Belgium, Egypt, Algeria and Morocco) and 4 Italian private companies. This proposal aims at mitigating the impact of climate changes by using innovative technologies for (i) increasing the availability of water suitable to agriculture irrigation, and (ii) carrying out a soilless precision agriculture, thus reducing the water demand and the exploitation of high-fertility soil. More in detail, the technical solutions proposed by SECUREFOOD2050 aim at the replacement of fresh water with treated wastewater obtained by using an innovative concept of constructed wetlands in which an artificially aerated bed is integrated with a biochar-based filtration section, which acts as a hybrid biological-physicochemical treatment. Furthermore, aiming at reducing water and soil exploitation, our project will investigate aeroponics and biochar assisted cultivation systems, as innovative soilless agricultural techniques for crop (rocket, pepper, strawberry, tomato, watermelon and olive) production, in which TWWs will be adopted for irrigation. Experiments will be carried out under current climatic conditions, as well as by simulating the 2050 worst climatic scenario. The project will monitor the quality (both nutritional and nutraceutical aspects) and safety of the food products, the latter covering a broad spectrum of contaminants characterized by different physicochemical properties and ability to diffuse along the agricultural production chain. SECUREFOOD2050 will also take care of the social aspects concerning consumer preferences and acceptability, as well as farmer’s possible reluctances to using TWW for irrigation. The overall obtained results will be integrated with data referred to materials and resources used with the various cultivation techniques applied in the different climatic-environmental scenarios, to perform a life-cycle assessment (LCA) of the food products obtained.
Network	FOSC
Call	1st FOSC Joint Cofund Call

Project partner

Number	Name	Role	Country
1	University of Florence	Coordinator	Italy
2	University of Bejaia	Partner	Algeria
3	University of Liège	Partner	Belgium
4	National Research Centre	Partner	Egypt
5	University of Cadi Ayyad of Marrakech	Partner	Morocco
6	University of Turin	Partner	Italy