During “2nd Agricultural and Climate Change Conference” let’s talk about the difficult relationship between climate change and agriculture
Is today closing the “2nd Agricultural and Climate Change Conference”, where our team presented the poster “A model-based decision support system integrated with smart sensors to support deficit irrigation strategies for tomato crop in Mediterranean environments” edited by M.M.Giuliani (SAFE, Università di Foggia), V.Buono (Sysman), G.Gatta (SAFE, Università di Foggia), E.E.Riezzo (Sysman), E.Nardella (SAFE, Università di Foggia), N. Prencipe (Syngenta Italy Inc), G. Manes (Netsens srl).
The agricultural world discussion about climate change and agriculture never stopped: how can we ensure an equal food resource supply during an era of climate instability?
During the “Green Revolution” era, we saw an increase of crop yields worldwide with an increase of crops disease resistance, realized by increasing irrigation water volumes and agrochemicals (fertilizers and pesticides used to improve products quality). However, we’re now living an era of climate instability, resources scarcity and decline soyl fertility in many regions. Because of all these reasons, we nowadays need “new approaches to produce climate resilient crops are desperately needed.”
What does “resilient crops” mean?
Resilience is defined as the ability of a system to absorb impact of changes, adapting, without upsetting its balance. In a time when climate change is a reality and uncertainty of their effects on crops are unpredictable, we need an internal revolution of production methods, in order to create crops with a long-term inherent adaptability and mitigation to stress factors. This revolution, therefore concerns not only crops but also production techniques, processes, and generally the very way we approach to agriculture.
Bluleaf® and technologies for climate change impacts mitigation
During the poster session, we presented a poster named “A model-based decision support system integrated with smart sensors to support deficit irrigation strategies for tomato crop in Mediterranean environments” edited by M.Giuliani (SAFE, University of Foggia), V.Buono (SYSMAN), G.Gatta (SAFE, University of Foggia), E.Riezzo (SYSMAN), E.Nardella (SAFE, University of Foggia), N. Prencipe (Syngenta Italy Inc), G. Manes (Netsens Ltd.). We aimed to present Bluleaf® as part of available technologies, which may contribute to mitigating climate change effects on crops. Bluleaf® as DSS (Decision Support System) has been tested on tomato crops, with the intent to demonstrate how softwares like this could be a trump card in farmers and agronomists hands , not just for crops monitoring optimization, but also to manage promptly interventions in case of uncontrolled stress situations or (as in the case of tomato) to cause and control them,for a greater crop yield.
The goal is still far away, but as long as the debate on climate change and their impact on agriculture world will stand active, we can hope for a Greener future.
