Solutions for improving Agroecosystem and Crop Efficiency for water and nutrient use (SolACE)

The aim of the SolACE project is to help European agriculture to deal with water and nutrients limitations that will be more frequent in the coming decades due to climate change. SolACE will achieve this objective through the design of novel crop genotypes and innovations in agroecosystem management to improve water and nutrient (i.e. N and P) use efficiency for three major European crops: potato, bread and durum wheat.

SolACE will implement complementary approaches, from data mining, modelling, phenotyping in high throughput platforms and field conditions, to experiments in research stations and farmer networks in contrasted pedo-climatic zones. The tested innovations will include crop genotype mixtures, legume-based crop rotations and cover crops, microbial inoculants, as well as improved decision support systems and hybrids or products from genomic selection and participatory evolutionary breeding schemes.

SolACE will involve diverse end-users, across the production chain, from farmers and farm advisors to NGOs, SMEs and larger industries in the agri-business sector, through the SolACE consortium and a range of stakeholder events. Through the co-design and co-assessment with the end-users of the selected novel breeding and management strategies to increase the overall system resource use efficiency, the findings of SolACE will be available for dissemination to a broad spectrum of stakeholders, including policy-makers.