Periodic Reporting for period 2 - NOVATERRA (INTEGRATED NOVEL STRATEGIES FOR REDUCING THE USE AND IMPACT OF PESTICIDES, TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE MEDITERRANEAN VINEYARDS AND OLIVE GROVES)
Berichtszeitraum: 2022-04-01 bis 2023-09-30
The assessment on negative impacts of PPP’s is not new and has been a major concern for EU policymakers. EU policies seek to reduce reliance on pesticides by designing and implementing better-integrated approaches, while safeguarding competitiveness and crop yield. Reducing the use of PPPs without incurring in a yield reduction has not been possible at a large scale. The ambition of NOVATERRA resides in delivering a combination of different novel techniques, coming from different approaches that will allow significant decrease in the negative impacts caused by PPPs while maintaining yield levels. In order to ensure relevant results, NOVATERRA will focus on testing new alternatives on vineyards and olive groves. This will allow have a large impact for Spain, Portugal, France, Italy and Greece, who produce approximately 99% of the total grapes and 85% of olives in the entire EU-28 area. Given that the benefits resulting from this project will be addressed to both producers and consumers, the rest of the EU members will benefit from NOVATERRA outputs as well, as the EU is the largest consumer of EU-produced oil and wines. NOVATERRA will allow increasing the technological, educational and implementation level of growers in terms of IPM and sustainable use of PPPs. This project may be used as a base for future R&I projects to deliver similar tools and strategies for other crops and areas, thus aiming at a much global impact in the longer term. Some of the expected impacts include:
- Improve farmer, consumer and citizen awareness of trust in global health approaches through clear, transparent and integrated assessments, pest/disease/weed prevention and control strategies for EU agricultural production;
- Introduce alternative approaches, tools, strategies and/or products for prevention and control of pests/diseases/weeds related to agricultural production.
- Assess the potential risks and benefits of the chosen alternatives in a coherent and consistent way in view of safety and sustainability;
- Improve current agronomic, ecological and cultural practices to increase the resilience of agricultural production and/or the agri-food chain against biotic stresses;
- Assess the economic, social and environmental impact of the alternative proposals for farmers and/ or consumers.
Once the resulting novel strategies are implemented, the consortium expects to create additional societal impacts through public engagement and education about NOVATERRA’s integrated novel strategies to reduce the PPPs negative NOVATERRA aims to significantly reduce the use and negative impacts of contentious plant protection products for integrated pest, disease and weed management in two of the main Mediterranean crops in Europe, grapevines and olive trees.
- Improve farmer, consumer and citizen awareness of trust in global health approaches through clear, transparent and integrated assessments, pest/disease/weed prevention and control strategies for EU agricultural production;
- Introduce alternative approaches, tools, strategies and/or products for prevention and control of pests/diseases/weeds related to agricultural production.
- Assess the potential risks and benefits of the chosen alternatives in a coherent and consistent way in view of safety and sustainability;
- Improve current agronomic, ecological and cultural practices to increase the resilience of agricultural production and/or the agri-food chain against biotic stresses;
- Assess the economic, social and environmental impact of the alternative proposals for farmers and/ or consumers.
Once the resulting novel strategies are implemented, the consortium expects to create additional societal impacts through public engagement and education about NOVATERRA’s integrated novel strategies to reduce the PPPs negative NOVATERRA aims to significantly reduce the use and negative impacts of contentious plant protection products for integrated pest, disease and weed management in two of the main Mediterranean crops in Europe, grapevines and olive trees.
NOVATERRA project has developed 36 trials along five countries (Greece, Italy, France, Spain and Portugal), testing alternative products: biosolutions, biostimulants, resistance inducers, nanoparticle-based products, biocontrol agents, mating disruptors, mass trapping and ozonized water. After 3 years of trials, none of the tested PPP’s alternatives has shown an outstanding performance alone or concluding results. One of the main reasons being the low pest and diseases pressure imposed by meteorological conditions. Dry and hot growing seasons have also reduced the yield in both crops and along the 5 countries. Resistance inducers trials have promising results to broaden their application and integration in viticulture. The strategies based on the applications of B. bassiana against olive fly offered similar efficacies to those based on the application of chemical pesticides. In the case of biocontrol agents in vineyard, multiple criteria should be considered to select the product to apply in every specific case. Olive moth control using bioinsecticides trials showed promising preliminary results, available after the end of season 2023. Ozonized water for the application of fungicide in vineyard showed bad performance due to technological problems with the generation and stability of the ozonized water prior to spraying.
NOVATERRA has developed several smart farming innovations that have been tested on the field: a) a detection algorithm based on spectral monitoring and pattern recognition for powdery mildew and peacock leaf spot b) a holistic platform for pests and diseases prediction and crop protection management. Variable rate application has been improved validating new sensors determining the vegetation volume against the vigour maps obtained by satellite images and manually verified in the field, producing more precise prescription maps for that allow reducing spray volumes along the vine rows in VSP standard vineyards, but also with promising results in complex orography. This being integrated with epidemiology models and weather risk in the holistic platform.
Following the bases stablished on the “Report on designing innovative soil management strategies for reduction of chemical inputs”, 8 trials in olive groves and 8 in vineyards were conducted to study the combination of cover crops, floral margins, optimization of the fertilization release and pruning wood management to determine the impact on pests and diseases, yield and biodiversity, being the results under analysis. The development of a modular cost-effective autonomous robot for mechanical weed removal has advanced with a good performance between rows in flat but also in steep slope plots. The intra-row implement needs further adjustment during the next season.
Integration of some of different practices described above has been done during 2023 in four trials in vineyards and olive groves in Greece, Portugal and Spain. Conditioned again by the weather conditions, the results of these trials will help to design the improved IPM for both crops. The socio-economical aspects of the implementation of the developing innovations are also being addressed. Consumers willingness to pay for wine and olive oil produced with less PPP’s has been surveyed. For wine, the willingness to pay for a 1% reduction in pesticide use in vineyards ranges between 1.2% and 15% of the average last purchase prices paid by consumers for a 750ml red wine bottle. Results depend on the Country and Certification among other sociodemographic characteristics. A survey on the adoption of the innovations by end users and experts of the wine and oil growing sectors and a cost-benefit analysis are currently undergoing. A web tool to evaluate the impact of crop and protection on social and environmental factors is under test.
Exploitation plan for the NOVATERRA outputs is under analysis and development. NOVATERRA works with a wide network of stakeholders ranging from administrations and decision makers to farmers and end users to ensure the communication and dissemination of project results, also addressed to the general population
NOVATERRA has developed several smart farming innovations that have been tested on the field: a) a detection algorithm based on spectral monitoring and pattern recognition for powdery mildew and peacock leaf spot b) a holistic platform for pests and diseases prediction and crop protection management. Variable rate application has been improved validating new sensors determining the vegetation volume against the vigour maps obtained by satellite images and manually verified in the field, producing more precise prescription maps for that allow reducing spray volumes along the vine rows in VSP standard vineyards, but also with promising results in complex orography. This being integrated with epidemiology models and weather risk in the holistic platform.
Following the bases stablished on the “Report on designing innovative soil management strategies for reduction of chemical inputs”, 8 trials in olive groves and 8 in vineyards were conducted to study the combination of cover crops, floral margins, optimization of the fertilization release and pruning wood management to determine the impact on pests and diseases, yield and biodiversity, being the results under analysis. The development of a modular cost-effective autonomous robot for mechanical weed removal has advanced with a good performance between rows in flat but also in steep slope plots. The intra-row implement needs further adjustment during the next season.
Integration of some of different practices described above has been done during 2023 in four trials in vineyards and olive groves in Greece, Portugal and Spain. Conditioned again by the weather conditions, the results of these trials will help to design the improved IPM for both crops. The socio-economical aspects of the implementation of the developing innovations are also being addressed. Consumers willingness to pay for wine and olive oil produced with less PPP’s has been surveyed. For wine, the willingness to pay for a 1% reduction in pesticide use in vineyards ranges between 1.2% and 15% of the average last purchase prices paid by consumers for a 750ml red wine bottle. Results depend on the Country and Certification among other sociodemographic characteristics. A survey on the adoption of the innovations by end users and experts of the wine and oil growing sectors and a cost-benefit analysis are currently undergoing. A web tool to evaluate the impact of crop and protection on social and environmental factors is under test.
Exploitation plan for the NOVATERRA outputs is under analysis and development. NOVATERRA works with a wide network of stakeholders ranging from administrations and decision makers to farmers and end users to ensure the communication and dissemination of project results, also addressed to the general population
In the final year NOVATERRA project is going to work in releasing the results of all the innovations tested. Some of the alternative products have shown good performances, but others have failed. This information on negative results is also insightful and useful to readdress from research to market expectations. A few innovations are in their way to the market by the end of the project or soon after. DSS, platform and web tools are to be finally validated. Improved IPM strategies for vineyards and olive groves are to be published by the end of the project