PRIMA Call 2021 – Section 1 – Management of Water – Topic 1.1.1- 2021(RIA) Sustainable soil and water management for combating land degradation and desertification and promoting ecosystem restoration
Lead partner NRD-UNISS, budget € 2.835.714,04, duration 36 months, start date April 2022
Land degradation and desertification (LDD) in Mediterranean (MED) drylands result from the interaction of ecological and socio-economic factors, exacerbated by climate change and limited adaptive capacity. These processes, particularly intense in the Mediterranean basin, threaten global food security and the region’s ecosystem service, while also impacting climate change mitigation and socio-economic stability. Addressing the multifaceted challenges posed by LDD requires integrated and holistic approaches that consider the combined effects of climatological, agronomic, social, and economic pressures.
Objective
SALAM-MED builds upon an interdisciplinary network of research organisations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and international organizations, with long-standing collaborative activities across the MED.
SALAM-MED is designed to provide a scientific and innovation contribution to the fight against desertification by promoting innovative solutions and business opportunities for sustainable management of soil and water resources. SALAM-MED proposes practical solutions to improve the resilience of threatened socio-ecological systems in the MED area through an integrated approach that combines (i) top-down processes based on research and development of technologies and solutions for sustainable management of soil and water resources and (ii) bottom-up processes based on the improvement of local capacities through the creation of new social learning spaces in different ecological and socio-economic contexts.
Strategy
The Institute for Sustainable Plant Production (IPSP) – National Research Council (CNR) has invested significant human and economic resources in developing advanced digital infrastructures for both field and laboratory research. These infrastructures facilitate studies across various scales of plant biological organization, from molecular (e.g., proteomics, metabolomics) and cellular or tissue-level analyses to ecosystem-level research, and vice versa.
Phenotyping involves the quantitative analysis of an organism’s traits, enabling the understanding of the factors underlying growth variability, such as the metabolic pathways that influence a plant’s characteristics, and consequently its productivity and resistance to climate change. Therefore, to optimize productivity, phenotyping integrates three key factors: genotype, environment, and management.
The phenotyping platform of the CNR-IPSP consists of instrumentation equipped with sensors for both proximal and remote sensing, including:
- A fleet of three drones, equipped with multispectral and hyperspectral imaging cameras, LiDAR, thermal, and RGB cameras with real-time systems providing centimeter-level detection accuracy.
- A rover and a gantry crane prototype fitted with the abovementioned sensors.
This equipment is complemented by portable instruments for ground-truth and advanced laboratory equipment for metabolomics and volatilomics.
Official website of the project: https://www.salam-med.org/