Projects
Wheat Watcher
The project aims to tackle pressing global issues such as population growth, climate change, and environmental degradation by creating and operating a comprehensive digital soil monitoring system. This system is foreseen to evaluate the nutritional state of soil and the chemical and biological factors that impact wheat grains from their initial growth stages through to the flour production phase.
By integrating the needs of various stakeholders through a collaborative stakeholder board, WHEATWATCHER will tailor solutions to meet the practical needs of farmers, mill operators, and policymakers across Europe. The project employs advanced sensor technologies, chemometric and machine learning models, as well as automated mapping techniques to enhance monitoring efficiency and scalability. A Decision Support System coupled with a cloud platform ensures accessible insights for end users.
NBSOIL
Four-year EU funded project that aims to create and test a learning pathway for existing and aspiring soil advisors. NBSOIL is designing an attractive blended learning programme to train a new wave of soil advisors. The training will provide participants with the tools to implement a holistic vision of soil health through nature-based solutions (NBS) and collaborate effectively across different temporal and spatial scales.
NBSOIL is aiming to mainstream a NBS approach and is emphasising the importance of soil monitoring and soil literacy. The project is focusing on six multifunctional practices, testing them as NBS and developing a holistic approach to land management and soil health: using organic fertilisers from locally available biowastes; planting cover crops; implementing paludiculture; diversifying forests; applying bioremediation; and integrating blue and green infrastructure in urban and peri-urban areas across natural, rural, urban, and industrial settings.
SERENA
SERENA was intended to enhance soil policy effectiveness through the analysis of soil ecosystem services bundles across European agricultural landscapes—that is, the analysis of a set of soil-based ecosystem services that repeatedly appeared together across space and time. Furthermore, SERENA aimed to highlight how soil threats affected the supply of service bundles through the adoption of a set of site-specific (i.e. for different pedo-climatic and agricultural systems) thresholds. These thresholds had to be scientifically based and identified with relevant stakeholders, and their selection was meant to support the identification of areas that were particularly effective or ineffective in provisioning the desired set of services.
João A. Coblinski 