Final Report Summary - WUEMED (Improving water use efficiency in Mediterranean agriculture: what limits the adoption of new technologies?) The WUEMED project sought to bring together and foster links amongst Mediterranean and European scientists, policymakers and other relevant stakeholders with the aim of optimising the water use by plants cropped in Mediterranean countries, as well as other regions afflicted by drought. The main objective of the WUEMED workshop was to assess and discuss how the knowledge and technology derived from the INCOMED projects along with the scientific evidence presented in INTERDROUGHT-II could promote technical improvements to dry areas and assess the impact on the end-users of the Mediterranean agriculture. The main activities of the project included: - the development of a website listing the objectives and summary of the project and links to other relevant websites concerned with water issues. The website includes a section related to the WUEMED workshop held in Rome in September 2005 reporting abstracts, workshop presentations and photo gallery, and the minutes of the WUEMED workshop. A second section, related to the WUEMED training course held in Bologna in June 2006, includes the programme, lectures in PDF format, list of participants and the results of a questionnaire circulated between the participants at the end of the course. - the support of the WUEMED workshop that was held at the National Research Council (CNR), in Rome, from 29 to 30 September 2005, right after the International meeting INTERDROUGHT-II. In total, 140 participants from 30 different countries registered for the workshop and almost 12 % of these were from west Asian and north African countries. - the support of the WUEMED training course that was held at the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Bologna, from 5 to 10 June 2006. The course was open to Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) students and young scientists interested in drought-related topics. In total, 80 participants from 27 different countries participated to the course. - the facilitation of communication and dissemination of information concerning the improvement of drought tolerance and the management of water resources in the Mediterranean system through the publication on the website of the workshop report directed to policy-makers and all other relevant stakeholders. Additional dissemination would be performed with the publication of scientific articles on a special issue of Annals of Applied Biology (in April 2007) and the organisation of an e-mail forum managed by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) (in March-April 2007). Related documents Final Report - WUEMED (Improving water use efficiency in Mediterranean agriculture: what limits the adoption of new technologies?)
