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Project Topic
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Resource reduction, extreme climatic events and loss of biodiversity in cultivated fields, are having a strong impact on farmers' incomes, subjecting farms to the risk of shutdown and fields abandonment. BIOMEnext proposal aims to optimize, with a multi-actor approach, all resources available along the entire supply chain, in terms of plant genetic potential, effective microbial consortia for plant growth and health, new agro-systems based on the use of controlled grassing and cover cropping. Among the various Mediterranean cultivation systems, tree fruit growing has undergone the greatest technological transformation towards a deep intensification, complete mechanization and a genetic revolution, allowing, on one hand, an increase in production and cost reduction but, on the other one, leading to a very strong increase in resource demand, soil consumption and air-water-soil pollution. A threatening diversity loss of varieties and organisms composing the agro-ecosystems and causing irreversible loss of soil, reduction of organic matter and unacceptable levels of pollution of the air and surrounding environment. As a consequence of these changes, it has become mandatory to re-design the production models, using or enhancing low resource-demanding cultivars and developing new cultivation systems ready to reduce energy and water inputs, favoring cenoses able to increase adaptation, resilience and ability to exploit the environmental resources, including microbiomes, cover crops, agro-pastoral systems, neglected and underutilized species to produce food, to preserve soil fertility, to protect the agro-environment and to enable sustainable and resilient agro-systems to produce under a circular bioeconomy perspective. Olive, the most typical fruit crop of the Mediterranean basin, should represent the model system for studying new cultivation strategies and testing their environmental and economical sustainability to protect against climate constraints and recover from excessive pollution, resource consumption and genetic erosion. The model built within the project, could then be adapted and extended to many other fruit crop species (grape, almond, citrus, etc.). BIOMEnext will put in place the following actions: •Harnessing traditional varieties, wild olives and new bred genotypes to redesign environmentally friendly groves; •Developing new bacterial consortia and mycorrhizal inoculants to promote climate resilient and stress-tolerant plants; •Building new composite eco-friendly crop systems; •Assessing the environmental and socio-economic impact of the proposed innovations and newly developed crop systems; •Involving different stakeholders of the supply chain in order to share the problems to be faced and the technologies to be applied, with an integrated participatory approach. The expected outputs include: •Selection of traditional and newly bred plant genotypes adapted to extreme conditions, stress tolerant and low-resource demanding, with high agronomical value in terms of productivity and product quality; •Development of microbial consortia and biostimulants to assist plant trees to grow under severe environmental conditions, to valorize low-fertile soils and the environmental constraints; •Recovery of traditional farming systems able to reduce resource inputs and endorse the natural resources; •Application of new farming technologies, including remote sensing technologies to reduce water, fertilizers and pesticides; •Increasing crop yield under different soil and climate stress conditions; •Integrating different value chain components into new farming systems; •Application of inclusive approaches and to increase the public acceptance of the new technologies
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