Speaker
Description
Agriculture accounts for around 14% of global greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions. Field crops, mainly cereals, cover around 520,000 ha, out of a total of 828,000 agricultural ha in Catalonia, NE Spain. Their productivity is based on management practices that involve low crop diversity, long periods of bare soil exposed to degradation, and the use of large amounts of nitrogen fertilizers, leading to GHG emissions into the atmosphere and significant C footprint. In this communication we will present the on-going activities of the recently launched Legitimada project and its first results. The main objective of Legitimada is to create knowledge and socio-economic impact in the mitigation and adaptation to climate change in Catalan agricultural production through an interdisciplinary and multi-scale strategy based on the diversification of agricultural systems with legumes. Legitimada is based on biological nitrogen fixation by legumes and bacteria symbioses and on legume capacity to provide protein to the human diet with a low environmental footprint, as a mitigation strategy and adaptation to climate change.
Field experiments will be devoted to assess the role of the introduction of legumes (as single crops, intercropped with cereals or oilseeds and/or as cover crops) on soil organic C sequestration and the mitigation of GHG emissions in agricultural systems representative of Catalonia: semi-arid and cool environments of the interior, sub-humid areas of the coast and irrigated areas of the Plana de Lleida. At the same time, the potential of bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) local genetic diversity will be analyzed for its adaptation to water stress and high temperatures in horticultural and arable crop systems. Finally, mitigation and adaptation strategies will be upscalled to the overall arable crop surface in Catalonia, taking into account the different edaphic, climatic and management characteristics through process-based modeling with STICS. Modeling will be used as an educational technology tool or virtual laboratory for teaching and disseminating knowledge to University and professional training students of the agri-food and pedagogical fields (e.g. future agricultural technicians, farmers and teachers of experimental sciences).
| Keywords | adaptation; climate change; legumes; Mediterranean; mitigation |
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