Projeto Portugal 2020

Código de operação Código que identifica cada projeto efetuado com recurso a fundos europeus.

Data de conclusão

Sumário

Olive (Olea europaea L.) is a widely spread tree species in the Mediterranean. The southern Member States of the EU have the largest area planted with this species in the world, ensuring around 70% of the total olive production (IOC 2019). Portugal is the fourth producer of olive oil in the EU, ensuring 3% of world production (IOC 2019). Over the last decades, the olive grove sector has been gaining weight and importance in the Portuguese economy, generating, at present, €95.5 million for the country (IOC 2017). In Portugal, Alentejo account for 50% of the total olive growing area, followed by Trás-os-Montes (22%), Beira Interior (18%), Ribatejo (7.7%) and Algarve (2.3%) (IOC 2019). This expansion of the olive oil sector in Portugal has been mainly due to the increase in olive grove extension and of the new olive growing management solutions adopted. Nowadays, orchards, with high density of plants per hectare, are usually irrigated, fertilized, sprayed with pesticides and mechanized, thus increasing productivity and profitability. However, this system of production based on high chemical inputs is highly controversial from an ecological sustainability stand-point, due to their environmental impacts, health risks and loss of biodiversity. This is particularly problematic for Trás-os-Montes olive groves which are often established in rain-limited areas and soils suffering from low fertility and erosion. In this region, most of the groves are managed under integrated production making systematic use of agrochemicals and with intensive weed control through tilling, increasing the risk of soil erosion and degradation. Moreover, this process of soil degradation is expected to exacerbated by the effects of climate change (Veerman et al. 2020). It is therefore of primary importance to act in order to improve and/or restore the “health” of olive grove soils. A healthy soil, which is defined as soil’s capacity to provide ecological functions for all forms of life (Veerman et al. 2020), is important for all life-sustaining process on the earth. For that reason, the EU presented an ambitious package of measures which goal is to “ensure that 75% of soils in each EU Member State are healthy by 2030”. The ambition of Man4Health is aligned with this mission by aiming to design and test innovative practices and technologies for soil management in olive groves of Trás-os-Montes region, in order to reduce the input of chemicals (for weed control, plant protection against pests and diseases, and fertilisation) and the consequent negative effects on soil health and on overall biodiversity while maintaining crop profitability and good quality food. Thus, in this project we will Identify and manage plant species that can be used as cover crops and/or floral margins for improving weed control, soil functional traits/biodiversity, biological control of pests and diseases, olive crop yield and quality, adapted to climate change. Cover cropping has been long recognized to improve soil health and ecosystem services (Prechsl et al. 2017). Certain plant species are known to increase soil organic matter and fertility, reduce erosion processes and/or provide a variety of additional ecosystem services such as pest/weed suppression, water management and enhancement of biodiversity (Adetunji et al. 2020). In spite of these advantages, the use of temporary cover crops in Mediterranean olive groves, including in Portugal, is still not very popular because of its limitations. Specifically, it reduces plant biodiversity and the related ecological functions, and cover crop is suspected of competing for water and nutrients with crop (Sastre et al. 2017). Likewise, how cover crops might help olive systems become more resilient to climate change warrant further analysis (Kaye & Quemada 2017). Thus, to maximize the benefits from cover crops in olive groves under a predicted climate change it is crucial to select the plant species most appropriated and produce guidelines for cover crop management, which have never been elaborated. Among candidate plant species, indigenous (native) plants are better adapted to local conditions, requiring fewer inputs and will be more easily untaken in the agricultural practice by local farmers. Flower strips also increase beneficial insects, including pollinators and natural enemies, that provide pollination and pest control services in crop production; but, little is done regarding their roles in olive orchards. Our aim is to test a range of native cover crop species, both individually and in mixes, under field and several climate conditions, and assess benefits on ecosystem services. Soil monitoring is emerging as a key factor to manage smart farming which has been recommended to have economical food safety and security, by avoiding the misuse of resources and the pollution of the environment. Thus, Man4Health will develop and test smart farming techniques by deploying sensors and mapping fields to monitor relevant soil parameters (nutrient contents, temperature, humidity, among others), in order to help farmers better manage and optimize agricultural input application. Currently, this decision-making is difficult due to several reasons. Among them, the fact that the nutritional requirements of olive trees have significant spatial variability. For this reason, the nutritional deficiencies shown in a given geographical area may be significantly different from those observed in other areas of the grove. This problem can be mitigated by massive data collection and processing obtained from the integration of electronic instrumentation and information technologies within the agricultural production loop. In this context, data can be locally obtained from Internet of Things (IoT) devices scatted along the olive grove which continuously acquires data from different types of sensors and relay it to remotes processing centres such as cloud processing platforms. On the other hand, information can be retrieved from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) from the processing of aerial images obtained from multispectral or hyperspectral cameras. Those two sources of information are not concurrent but complete themselves since IoT are able to provide a continuous stream of data but it concerns only local information. On the other hand, UAV only provides information at specific intervals when flights take place but they can supply image data related to a larger area. Both approaches can help farmers to understand, in real-time, whether the crop management practices adopted are appropriated, without the production of chemical residues and at a reduced cost. Overall, it is expected that these new integrated strategies based on soil management practices, smart farming and/or precision agriculture, will increase soil health and olive crop yield.