BioFoodOnMarS – crop production on marginal soils EU FACCE -funded project
Marginal lands are left aside from agricultural use, because they it is too poor, too polluted, or too dry to be profitable. This represents a large area in Europe, more than 38.5 million Ha. On the other hand, there is ever increasing pressure on arable land, to be able to feed the increasing world population. In this project we assess if we can we make this marginal land attractive again for food or feed production? If yes, how? And can we do that with a minimal C footprint?
This project involves several research groups from Estonia, Germany, France, Poland, Lithuania, and UHasselt. All partners have experimental sites where they do amendment trials on marginal soils, and at the Ecotron we test the potential of these amendments for climate adaptation and climate change mitigation.
Here we subject the crops to the RCP 8.5 scenario of 2070. See here for more information.
We assess
- potential of enhancing weathering technologies (more info) on soil carbon sequestration in future climate, and
- potential of Si amendments to stimulate plant drought and pathogen resistance. Click here to meet the project consortium and to learn about the ecosystem functioning assessments that we conduct.