On 25 September 2024, the National Scientific Centre ‘Institute for Soil Science and Agrochemistry Research named after O.N. Sokolovsky ’ hosted a webinar ‘Innovations of the European project FARMWISE for sustainable management of water and soil resources in agriculture’, organised within the framework and with the support of International project of the HORIZONT Europe FARMWISE program (Future Agricultural Resource Management and Water Innovations for a Sustainable Europe). The event is dedicated to the World Soil Day WSD2024 ‘Caring for Soils: Measurement, Management, Monitoring’ and is registered at FAO's interactive global map of events WSD2024.
The event was attended by about 150 participants: 98 via the ZOOM platform and 44 on the Institute's Facebook page. The webinar was attended by agricultural specialists, representatives of the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences, research institutions, higher education institutions, the Department of Agricultural Development of the Kharkiv Regional State Administration, the State Agency for Soil Conservation, local communities, producers, commercial structures in the field of agricultural relations, and other stakeholders.
Professor, Head of the Department of Water Resources Engineering at Lund University (Sweden), welcomed the participants of the Webinar - Magnus PERSSON.
Project Coordinator in Ukraine, Deputy Director for Scientific Activities at the NSC ISSAR Mykola MIROSHNYCHENKO presented the purpose, activities and prospects of he European project FARMWISE for sustainable management of water and soil resources in agriculture’.
The webinar included two panel discussions.
Panel discussion 1: ‘Innovations for solving the problems of water supply in agriculture’
Moderator: Lyudmyla Vorotyntseva — Doctor of Agricultural Sciences Leading Researcher of Laboratory of Hydrodeficient, Hydromorphic and Acidic Soils National Scientific Centre ‘Institute for Soil Science and Agrochemistry Research named after О. N. Sokolovsky ’.
As part of the panel discussion, the moderator introduced the participants to a brief description of the innovations from their developers, which are being researched in the project and are aimed at solving the problems of water supply to agricultural production. The speakers and webinar participants noted the relevance and practical significance of the innovations, which will provide operational soil monitoring, obtaining up-to-date information on the content of productive moisture and nutrients in the soil and information on making appropriate decisions to optimise water use, adaptation to drought, smart irrigation, efficient use of water using advanced technologies, the introduction of information systems, artificial intelligence, remote sensing methods and modeling.
The speakers and participants of the webinar actively discussed the prospects for the use of innovations and developments and their advantages compared to existing analogues: sensors for measuring soil moisture and temperature and nutrient content; an automated soil moisture control system; compact weather radars in irrigated and non-irrigated agriculture and vegetable growing.
Project implementers Mykola Miroshnychenko and Stanislav KOVALENKO presented the preliminary results of testing innovation No. 3 on the application of an automated soil moisture control system in Ukraine.
Panel discussion 2 - ‘Innovations to address water quality problems caused by agricultural production’
Moderator: Yevheniia Hladkikh — PhD of Agricultural Sciences , Senior Research Fellow of Agrochemistry Department named after Academician of NAAS B. S. Nosko of National Scientific Centre ‘Institute for Soil Science and Agrochemistry Research named after O.N. Sokolovsky ’
The second panel discussion began with the moderator reminding the participants in general about the 11 innovations developed under the FARMWISE project, some of which are dedicated to tools for detecting and monitoring pollution and degradation of natural water quality, in particular caused by agricultural sources. The moderator briefly presented the four main innovations on the topic of the panel discussion: (1) a biochar-based soil and water reclamation system (which includes a technology for processing biomass waste into biochar, which has advantages for use in agriculture); (2) low-cost green biosensors for on-site water quality monitoring (which are paper-based and can be scanned by smartphones to detect water pollution with organophosphate pesticides, heavy metals, nitrates and microbial contamination); (3) an innovative technology for monitoring microbial water quality for irrigation (a method based on flow cytometry that allows measuring changes in the composition of microorganisms in water samples); (4) a model for predicting and assessing the dynamics of water quality deterioration due to excessive fertiliser application (based on new methods for creating fertiliser impact maps from satellite data and allowing calculating several impact indicators - indicators for modelling the effect of a given fertiliser dose on water pollution).
During the discussion of innovations, the speakers emphasised the critical importance of the problem of nitrate nitrogen pollution of natural waters from agricultural sources, which is of utmost importance for Ukraine. The discussions also touched upon the implementation of the Nitrate Directive (EU Council Directive on the Protection of Water from Pollution Caused by Nitrates from Agricultural Sources) into national legislation, which requires signatory countries to take mandatory measures to monitor water quality to determine the extent or potential risk of nitrate pollution. Such circumstances require the use of modern water quality monitoring tools by the country's agricultural producers. In this context, all the speakers and participants of the webinar agreed that the innovative developments of the FARMWISE project will be useful to agricultural producers and have the potential to be used in Ukraine.
The webinar attendees, who are potential users of the project's innovative developments, noted their modernity, as they all include elements of artificial intelligence. Participants expressed interest in each of the developments and offered to participate in testing, including providing testing sites for some of them.
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