SUPROMED - Sustainable production in water limited environments of mediterranean agro-ecosystem

The main expected contributions of SUPROMED are: - To improve food security by increasing food production per amount of irrigation water applied to the crops and its quality under arid and semiarid conditions. - To increase the agricultural income by optimizing and/or decreasing the use of inputs and giving farmers and technicians tools. - To implement advanced methodologies for the management of farms, promoting the creation of qualified and specialized employment. - To increase the resilience of agricultural systems to climate change through the development of tools for forecasting and advising against extreme climatic events. - To decrease the impact on the environment by reducing the use of water, energy and fertilizers in annual and fruit tree crops, by improving the integration of livestock in the management of irrigated farms, and by promoting the use of good agricultural practices.

SUPROMED will provide a holistic crop-livestock water management system resilient to climate change. In detail, an end-user IT (Information Technology) platform specially designed to smartly advise farmers in the efficient water management of Mediterranean cropping and livestock systems will be delivered. To this aim, SUPROMED will integrate a validated set of models and tools (MOPECO , IREY , DOPIR or DOPIR-SOLAR ) in an online platform to increase the production and income of farms through a reduction and a more efficient use of water, and other inputs such as energy and fertilizers, while decreasing the impact on the environment. SUPROMED will consider real in-situ data and Earth Observation (EO) imagery, agro-alerts, agroclimatic classification and zoning together with drought forecast tools linked to climatic change. Drought monitoring and forecasting are essential tools for implementing appropriate mitigation measures to reduce negative impacts of droughts and will be very helpful for adequate water resource management. The end-user platform will be widely demonstrated across Spain, Lebanon and Tunisia. Moreover, an ambitious Training program that is to be performed in 4 Mediterranean countries will be accompanying farmers for the successful implementation of SUPROMED in agricultural practices. SUPROMED aims to promote a 10-20% increase in the adoption of organizational and technological innovations in farms with an overall impact across the Mediterranean basin.