Dramatic changes will need to be undertaken in the coming years for Mediterranean agriculture to face climate change challenges while improving sustainability. UToPIQ will create new cultivars amenable for intercropping, a farming practice which involves growing two or more crops in close proximity to one another. Intercropping is particularly resilient to climate change, as it can provide protection against strong winds and intense sunlight (e.g. by using tall crops), help slow the proliferation of pests (e.g. by using trap or repellent crops), reduce the need of fertilizers (e.g. by using nitrogen-fixing crops), and promote biodiversity. While careful planning can prevent crops from competing with each other for space, water, nutrients, or sunlight, the toolbox of crop varieties amenable to this farming ecosystem is very limited. UToPIQ addresses this challenge by generating and testing shade-tolerant varieties of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum), a shade-avoider crop with a central relevance for Mediterranean agriculture. Academic groups from Spain, France, Italy and Morocco with expertise in plant biotechnology, abiotic and biotic stress, and sustainable agriculture will work together with stakeholders to take results from the lab to the field within the timeframe of the project. Firstly, we will translate our knowledge on how model plants either avoid or tolerate proximity shade to generate loss-of-function and gain-of-function alleles of relevant genes in tomato by CRISPR-Cas9 technology. We will also investigate whether proximity shade triggers the release of volatiles that influence growth and development of potential nearby competitors and test whether facilitation (i.e. positive interactions among plants growing in communities) improves in shade-tolerant lines. The bulk of UToPIQ activities will focus on evaluating the agronomic performance of the generated tomato lines in greenhouse and open field settings. For intercropping we will use a commercial crop (maize) and an orphan crop (millet) that can protect tomato plants from excess irradiation and pests. We will test whether shade-tolerant tomato lines show enhanced resilience to abiotic and biotic stresses and will pay special attention to fruit yield and nutritional, organoleptic and commercial quality at harvest and post-harvest stages. Along the process, we will also work together with farmers, breeders, entrepreneurs and consumers to develop new climate-ready crops with unprecedented precision and speed. It is important to note that the results from UToPIQ could be applied to generate new varieties of tomato and other crops without the need of using gene editing technologies (e.g. they could be produced by conventional mutagenesis, breeding and selection or TILLING once target genes are identified). At the end of the project we expect to have shown that shade-tolerant lines represent an improvement for intercropping and other farming agrosystems involving closely interacting plants, reaching TRL5. By boosting the capacity to easily generate cultivars amenable to high-density and intercropping farming, UToPIQ results will be instrumental for the transition towards a more sustainable agriculture with improved resilience to climate change in the Mediterranean region. This will help to save space, water and other inputs and maintain productivity even after extreme drought, heat, or pest invasions while improving the economic stability of small farmers and addressing the key challenges of food security and acceptance of biotechnology.

The work develops and improves an operational system for real-time forecast of irrigation water need to support parsimonious water management in case of present or forecasted drought period. The system will be a prototype version of a worldwide web platform that will support users in parsimonious irrigation water management from water authorities to single farmers according to actual and forecasted irrigation water demand. The project starts from an already implemented system developed by project partners in the “SIM project” funded by ERA-NET Cofund Water Works 2014 under Water JPI (Horizon 2020). In particular, the system will support: i) farmers to maintain soil moisture in an optimum interval allowing water saving and reducing plant stress, ii) irrigation consortiums to manage the water among users; iii) water authorities to manage water withdraw from reservoirs. The system combines satellite monitoring of soil moisture and of evaporative fluxes using thermal infrared and microwave data, quantitative meteorological forecast, detailed distributed hydrological modelling of soil water balance, crop growth model. The system provides real-time and forecasted soil moisture behavior at high spatial and temporal resolutions (from 10 m to 250 m, from 1 hour to daily) with forecast horizons from few up to thirty days. This forecasted soil moisture will be continuously compared with water stress thresholds characteristic of each specific crop and its growth stage, allowing to determine the correct timing and amount of irrigation. Economic impacts of a parsimonious water use will be evaluated using specific indicators from single farm to larger irrigation districts considering not only the role of water and energy saved in financial terms based on the local cost of the water and crop production, but also the increase of crop yield and the environmental benefit. The proposed methodology will be applied in different case studies in the Mediterranean area in Italy, Spain and Morocco, which are characterized, by different climatic conditions, water availability, crop types and irrigation schemes. The proposed system, for its versatility, can be easily exported for applications to the other case studies worldwide as one in China. The presence of Chinese partner will help in demonstrating this. The project stakeholders (Water authorities, farmers consortium and single farms) for the different case studies will be involved from the project beginning sharing project approach, activities and type of outputs, customizing the system so that its uptake will be easily promoted in the stakeholder habits. The proposed project complements previous partners’ heritage, providing the necessary starting experience on integrating meteorological, soil hydrological, remote sensing and economic modelling in the stakeholders needs. The expected innovative tool will have impact both on the scientific community, as well as on operative farms and water authorities. These results will be guarantee from the work team that represents a good compromise between research institutes and small enterprises, which can implement advance research tools into an operative industrial product.

Emerging plant viral diseases represent a significant burden to plant health, and their highest impact in Mediterranean agriculture is on vegetables grown under intensive horticultural practices. Intensive horticulture is very competitive and one of the most dynamic sectors in Mediterranean agriculture. The emergence of a new viral disease results from a complex interaction among several factors, including ecological changes of host and vector populations, and genetic changes due to the introduction of new crop varieties and the evolution of the viruses and/or vectors. A transnational consortium incorporating 12 research groups from 5 EU and 4 non-EU Mediterranean countries has been gathered to analyse different aspects of the ecology and biology of specific plant viruses, providing measures for the management and control of specific emergent viral diseases in Mediterranean horticulture and, importantly, a better understanding of the phenomenon of emergence itself. We will focus on a few undisputedly important case studies for Mediterranean horticulture, such as whitefly-transmitted geminiviruses in tomato and cucurbits, aphid-transmitted viruses in cucurbits and Pepino mosaic virus in tomato. Specific objectives of the project include (i) identification of host reservoirs for emergent viruses, (ii) development of advanced diagnostic tools, (iii) analysis of host-range determination and host-range modification, (iv) analysis of short- and long-range virus dispersion, including vector transmission and population genetics, (v) analysis of virus evolution, (vi) risks evaluation of virus emergence in a changing environment and (vii) development of sustainable strategies for the control of emerging plant viral diseases.

EU Water Framework Directive 2000/60/EC and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in Europe together with the present national policies of the Northern Africa countries, and UN SDGs goals, highlights the need of improving water irrigation management towards its sustainable use and economic saving. In this framework, the project, responds to the call objectives proposing a real-time operative water and economic management web-gis tool for parsimonious and precise irrigation optimizing crop yield and economic income, integrating farm analysis into water district one. The tool will allow to monitor and forecast the soil moisture behaviour at farm and district levels to define the right irrigation discharge, optimizing water and economic indicators. The tool supports different levels of stakeholder: i) farmers who control soil moisture avoiding plant water and saline stress, ii) irrigation consortia which allocates water among users; iii) water authorities which manage water withdraw from reservoirs. In addition, the tools present also the possibility to be used as simulator of water allocation supporting decision strategy at irrigation district scale in real time and for seasonal forecast scenarios. Multi satellite data, ground measurements, daily and seasonal meteorological forecast, soil water budget numerical modelling, crop growth model, and economic analysis will support the tool. The proposed tool and embedded methodology will be applied in different case studies of the Mediterranean area: Italy, Spain, Egypt Tunisia and Morocco and also in China characterized by different climatic conditions, fresh and saline water availability, crop types, irrigation practices, polices and water pricing. These case studies will be also used for diffusion of parsimonious irrigation practice through technology transfer and dedicated courses for farm and irrigation district people.