The Agriculture Food Environment Center (C3A), which brings together Fondazione Edmund Mach and the University of Trento, in cooperation with the Research and Innovation Centre of FEM, will participate with 15 other European institutions and companies in an important study on the replacement of contentious inputs, like copper for example, in organic farming systems.
The goal of the project, which will receive 4 million funding from the Horizon 2020 European programme and has just been presented to the public in a kick-off meeting in Belgium, is to develop alternatives to the use of copper and insecticides in agricultural products produced in Trentino, facilitating the adoption of cost-efficient and environmentally safe tools and technologies.
The project, coordinated by the most important research centre in the field of organic agriculture in Europe, the Forschungsinstitut für Biologischen Landbau Stiftung (Fibl), will last four years and will include investments to develop innovative solutions that can be easily and quickly transferred to the market and an experimental phase which will involve the same organic farming companies coordinated at European level by the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements – European Union (IFOAM-EU).
Italy will participate in this phase with the organic farming organizations members of Federbio, which has been working with FEM since 2017 under a collaboration agreement.
The research has its origin in the growing interest of consumers and citizens for organic farming and produce from organic agriculture.
Researchers will focus most of all on the research and development of alternatives to the use of copper as fungicide, especially in viticulture. In particular, researchers are working with an important company on a naturally occurring active substance that can be produced in large quantity at industrial level through an enzymatic process involving food ingredients.
The active substance has already been tested in vineyard on a small scale and it proved to be effective.
The research will also try to phase out the use of insecticides, especially those based on mineral oil, through mating disruption using vibrations.
Researchers will also study a new product obtained from a plant from the bean family that inhibits digestion in insects.
The press release includes statements from Paolo Collini, Rector of UniTrento, Andrea Segrè, president of FEM, and Ilaria Pertot, director of the Agriculture Food Environment Centre.