Description
For healthy olive groves in the European Mediterranean
After more than fifty years of intensive agriculture application, the environmental situation for many olive groves across the Mediterranean Region is quite dramatic in terms of land degradation, biodiversity impoverishment, functionality loss, which may have already impacted on the quality and safety of olive oil, one of the most important commodities produced in Europe. This project will perform the first rigorous diagnostic of the environmental situation of olive groves soils at a broad scale, considering the most important areas of olive production at the Mediterranean Region and its relationships to olive oil quality. Soil O-live aims (i) to analyze the impact of pollution and land degradation on soils from olive groves in terms of multi-biodiversity, ecological function at different levels of organization and scales; (ii) to investigate the relationship of soil health status with quality and safety of olive oil; (iii) to implement effective soil amendments and ecological restoration practices that promote manifest soil biodiversity and functionality enhancements in permanent Mediterranean olive orchards across its native range of distribution, that should be translated to improvements in olive oil quality and safety; (iv) to define rigorous ecological thresholds that allow to implement future clear norms and regulations in order to design a novel certification for healthy soils in European olive orchards.
Webpage
Status
ActiveJan-01, 2023 to Dec 31, 2027
Funding Source
(EU) Horizon Europe
Funding Programme
EU, Horizon Europe, HORIZON-MISS-2021-SOIL-02-03: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101091255
ERUA University/ies
University of Konstanz (Germany), University of the Aegean (Greece)Role
Partner
Topic
Linking soil health to nutritional and safe food
Countries
Consortium
The project consortium is made up of 15 academic institutions and 2 companies from the olive sector. Coordinator is University of Jaén (Spain). Partners: University of Roma Tre (Italy), Free University of Berlin (Germany), University of Castilla La Mancha- Spain, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) -Spain, University of Tras-Os-Montes e Alto Douro (Portugal), Spanish Standardisation Agency UNE( Spain), Hellenic University of the Mediterranean (Greece),NUTESCA SL- Spain, ELGO-DIMITRA (Greece), University of Silesia in Katowice (Poland), University of Palermo (Italy),Italian National Research Council – Bari (CNR), National School of Agriculture of Meknes (Morocco), DEOLEO GLOBAL S.A (Spain), Nutesca S.L (Spain),University of Bern (Switzerland)