Fertilisation and Irrigation Inital members: - Rodney Thompson - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Fertilisation and Irrigation

• Inital members:
• Rodney Thompson (Spain): temporary animator
• Micheline Verhaeghe (Belgium): temporary secretary
• Danny Callens (Belgium)
• Leif Nett (Germany)
• Kristina Ugrinovic (Slovenia)
• Norbert Laun (Germany)
• Priit Poldma (Estonia)
• Carolina Martinez Gaitan (Spain)
• Antonios Chrysargyris (Cyprus)
• Laura Prieto Munoz (Spain/Belgium)

Fertilisation and Irrigation

Participants

• President: To be determined
• Secretary: To be determined

Fertilisation and Irrigation

Objectives:

• To create a forum for active researchers in fertilisation and

irrigation, in EU and H2020 associated countries

• To

facilitate interaction, information exchange, and collaboration between researchers

• To facilitate formation of consortia for submissions for EU

and other projects

• To participate in agenda setting of future EU research

programs

Fertilisation and Irrigation

Issues to be addressed regarding fertilisation:

• Effects on water quality
• Contamination with nutrients: N and P
• Increasingly strict application of relevant EU Directives
• Increasing recent attention to P
• Limits on organic P addition
• Revision of interprepation of soil test results
• Issues related to limits on application of organic amendments
• Negative effects on soil quality
• Disease suppresion
• Grower attitudes
• Growers are generally conservative; often older
• Reluctant to consider and adopt new practices
• Many have small operations with limited financial capacity for newer

equipment

Fertilisation and Irrigation

Issues to be addressed regarding irrigation:

• Limited water supply, particularly in southern Europe
• Requirement to optimise water use efficiency
• Use of alternative water supplies e.g. residual water, grey water
• Water quality
• Optimizing management of moderately saline water
• Effective use of water with high concentrations of certain elements e.g. B
• Leaching of nutrients
• Reducing drainage; collecting drainage, recycling drainage
• Conservative farmer attitudes
• High cost of new technologies
• Effective use of sensor technologies
• More information on threshold values e.g. Protocols for establishing
• Sharing information on threshold values e.g. for matric potential sensors
• Procedures to establish threshold values for volumetric soil water content

Fertilisation and Irrigation

Actions:

• To invite active researchers in fertilization and irrigation of veg.

crops, in EU and H2020 associated countries

• Prepare list of members showing current research activities

and interests

• Encourage and facilitate exchange of information between

researchers

• Contribute to strategic agenda statements to the European

Commission concerning future research and innovation topics related to vegetable crop production

• Have an annual meeting

Fertilisation and Irrigation

• Meeting date or period:
• Annual meetings
• First in 2016
• Comments:
• Will also include fertilisation of organically-grown vegetable

crops