This presentation has been carried out by Dr. Ignacio Lorite Torres (Institute for Agricultural and Fisheries Research and Training, IFAPA), who has 10 years of experience in the impact of climate change on agricultural systems in the Mediterranean.

IFAPA is a research and training organization of the Andalusian regional administration whose objective is to promote the development of an innovative business culture in response to the real needs of Andalusian agriculture. IFAPA’s “Agriculture and Environment” area works on evaluating the impact of climate change on Mediterranean olive groves using experimentation and modeling methodologies with the aim of promoting adaptation measures against climate change.

The impact of climate change on Mediterranean olive orchards will affect to the sustainability of these agricultural systems in the future. To mitigate this impact, the consideration of Sustainable Technological Solutions in the Mediterranean olive orchards will be evaluated using experimentation and modelling tools. Thus, in the Task 3.7 of SUSTAINOLIVE project, advanced approaches for assessing the resilience to climate change of the Mediterranean olive orchards under future weather conditions will be considered. This task is led by IFAPA and will participate institutions from Greece, Portugal, Italy, Morocco, Tunisia and Spain.

The Task 3.7 will develop a specific simulation model for olive (named AdaptaOlive) that will incorporate new functions for simulating advanced crop and soil management practices for increasing the sustainability of these systems. The new approaches will be based on experimental field data collected in the six countries participating in the project. With this tool SUSTAINOLIVE project will be able to define the behavior of the Mediterranean olive orchards under different climatic and technological scenarios, and then, to identify those strategies more convenient for improving the sustainability of these agricultural systems in the future.