LOGROÑO, 24 (EUROPA PRESS)
The reduction of nitrogen fertilizers does not affect the quality or quantity of the food obtained, according to the first studies of the Operational Group for the sustainable use of nitrogen fertilizers in rotating crops in La Rioja Alta (Nicotron).
The researcher from the University of La Rioja Julia Arbizu will present these results at the III International Congress of Future Food Engineering, which will be held on May 25 in online format.
The main objective of the Nicotron Operational Group is the development of new methodologies and protocols for fertilization and irrigation that allow optimizing the quality and yield in a sustainable way of rotating crops of peas, green beans, sugar beets, rapeseed and cereals in La Rioja Alta, zone classified as vulnerable to nitrate contamination.
The researchers Julia Arbizu Milagro and Francisco José Castillo Ruiz, from the Research Group ‘Technology, Engineering and Food Safety’ of the UR, direct the analytics and scientific publications of the project.
An initiative in which the producer associations Cooperativa Garu (coordinator) and Aimcra also participate, as well as the companies Spectralgeo and Encore Lab. It is co-financed by the Ministry of Agriculture, the Government of La Rioja and the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development ( EAFRD).
The first results, obtained in the experimental plots with pea and green bean rotations during the years 2019 and 2020, indicate that “with reductions of up to 86% in nitrogen fertilization and without modifying the rest of the nutrients or irrigation, no found significant differences neither in production nor in quality of the products obtained, despite the hail storms suffered on May 9 and July 9, 2020 “, according to the researchers.
However, the nitrate content of the soil “has not shown a clear trend with the decrease in nitrogen fertilization”. Scientists believe that this may be due to several factors: lower nitrogen extraction by crops in 2020, as their vegetative development is reduced as a result of hail storms; the difference in the rainfall regime that could modify the amount of leached nutrients, or the nitrogen content of the soil prior to planting the crops.
In the execution of the project, a series of plots of the vulnerable zone of La Rioja Alta have been selected and characterized. Throughout its four-year duration (until April 2023), each plot is being cultivated with a rotation of the alternative crops in the area. In addition, subplots have been established with different doses of nitrogen fertilizer, to be able to study the degree of nitrogen assimilation by the crop and the leachate fraction depending on the applied fertilization.
To obtain data, soil moisture sensors have been installed at different depths in each of the plots, as well as a meteorological station in the area of influence. Drone flights are also carried out taking multispectral images to determine the relationship between different vegetation indices, in different cultivation phases, and the nutritional status and production of each crop.
The project seeks to establish appropriate fertilizer strategies and develop monitoring technologies for the nutritional monitoring of crops, among other objectives. This could lead to significant cost savings for the farmer, as well as a higher quality in the final product.
The works of the Nicotron Task Force will be presented at The 3rd International Conference on Engineering Future Food, organized by the Italian Association of Chemical Engineering (AIDIC), from May 23 to 26. They are also collected in two scientific articles sent to the journals Chemical Engineering Transactions (under review) and World Journal of Agriculture and Soil Science (already published: http://ow.ly/P9b450EQaDC).
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