International Projects

TAIE (FIRST) : Truffle Agroforestry Innovate & Empower
Duration01 September 2025 - 31 December 2028
TAIE is a three-year project where innovation meets tradition to fundamentally renew agroforestry based on truffle and Terfezia cultivation. Our mission goes beyond mere cultivation; we are promoting a change towards efficiency, productivity and sustainability. The proposal for a European Parliament and Council Directive on soil monitoring and resilience introduces descriptors and criteria for soil health, which will be integrated into the TAIE project to assess the effectiveness of applied agroforestry practices to improve soil health. In addition, TAIE aligns with many of the agricultural practices advocated by the Common Agricultural Policy, which focus on promoting the integration of trees and shrubs into the agricultural landscape to protect biodiversity, improve soil health and sequester carbon dioxide. It also promotes crop diversification to improve soil structure, reduce pest and disease pressure and increase ecosystem resilience. In addition, TAIE aims to explore technical solutions and promote high value crops, especially in areas of high ecological value, to preserve biodiversity and landscape diversity. Our aim is to decipher the value chains of truffles and Terfezia in Italy, Spain, Türkiye, and Morocco and to study their organisational intricacies, strengths, weaknesses and regulatory frameworks to improve value chain development. TAIE is not only about truffles, Terfezia production and agroforestry, but also about empowering communities and promoting gender equality. Through collaboration and education, we plan to equip people with the knowledge and tools they need to succeed in truffle farming alongside other agricultural activities. TAIE is a three-year project where innovation meets tradition to renew agroforestry based on truffle and Terfezia cultivation. TAIE seeks to revolutionise truffle cultivation through the implementation of agroforestry practices while empowering communities through the development of innovative techniques, learning activities, and materials, as well as a steadfast commitment to gender equality. By actively engaging stakeholders and creating demonstrators and educational materials, the project aims to equip individuals with the tools necessary for successful truffle cultivation alongside other crops and/or animal grazing. Agroforestry practices, such as introducing cover crops and/or grazing animals, beekeeping, etc., in combination with the cultivation of valuable truffles, have the potential to enhance soil quality by promoting organic carbon sequestration, thereby mitigating losses, particularly in regions like the Mediterranean where erosion poses a significant challenge. Additionally, animal grazing can offer natural weed control and soil fertilisation, ultimately leading to increased nutrient content in the soil. Also, our aim is to deeply investigate the value chains of truffles and Terfezia in Italy, Spain, Türkiye, and Morocco and to study their organisational intricacies, strengths, weaknesses and regulatory frameworks to improve value chain development. The proposal for a European Parliament and Council Directive on soil monitoring and resilience introduces descriptors and criteria for soil health, which will be integrated into the TAIE project to assess the effectiveness of applied agroforestry practices to improve soil health. With the help of precision farming techniques and the S-DSS LandSupport platform for soil suitability and crop productivity, we want to help reshape the future of agroforestry.
Coordinator: Luisa Massaccesi (luisa.massaccesi@cnr.it)
FERBIOSOIL (MAECI-MOST Scientific Call 2024-2026): Novel advanced biofertilizers from spent FERmentative BIOmasses for enhancing agriculture circularity and SOIL health
DurationDecember 2024 - December 2027
FERBIOSOIL aims to test and prove at TRL4 the agricultural valorisation of Spent Fermentative Biomasses (SFBs) and to evaluate their potential use in partial/total substitution of chemical fertilisers. Scientifically, the project will elucidate the agronomic value of the SFBs in terms of nutrients, organic matter supply to plants and soil, or other mechanisms promoted by the SFB microbial populations, as well as the environmental suitability of this strategy. Soil health will also be evaluated, i.e. assessing the impacts on soil biological fertility. Molecular tools will be used to study soil microbiome, to correlate the agronomic results with the SFB microbiome structure or with possible variation in the soil microbial community's composition. Starting from the scientific collaboration, FERBIOSOIL is expected to strengthen the partnership between the research groups involved, enhancing future collaborations and promoting the exchange of knowledge between Italian and Israeli scientists. FERBIOSOIL is expected to evaluate the substitution of chemical fertilisers with SFBs. A preliminary economic evaluation will be carried out to highlight which would be the savings coming from this shift from chemical fertilisers to recovered ones. By communicating and disseminating the results (i.e. publications, presentation of achievements to congress, conferences, and events), the project is expected to have social relevance in terms of community, educational communities and policy makers engagement.
Coordination: Dr. Mirko Cucina (mirko.cucina@cnr.it)

TeleNitro (PRIMA): New low cost crop strategies based on biodiversity and remote sensing to reduce the application of nitrogen fertilisers in the Mediterranean area.

Duration: 01 July 2023- 31 December 2026

Fertilisation is an essential practice to obtain the maximum production and quality of the crop harvest. However, the excessive use of nitrogenous fertilisers produces environmental problems related to the accumulation of nitrates in the soil and in the environment, mainly in lagoons, seas, oceans, etc., which trigger a series of problems that affect different society sectors. Mediterranean basin countries such as Spain, Italy, Morocco, and Tunissia have vulnerable areas in terms of the accumulation of nitrates in the environment, so there is a need to develop cultivation strategies that minimise the damage of nitrates in the environment by reducing the amount of nitrogen fertilisers applied on farms. Therefore, the objective of "TeleNitro" project is to reduce nitrogen fertiliser in the crops by the design of a new cultivation strategy to reduce the contribution of nitrogenous fertilisers through the use of plants and/or botanical extracts with the capacity to slow down the transformation of ammonium into nitrate. Plants absorb and assimilate ammonium more effectively than nitrate, and in the environment ammonium pollutes less than nitrate.

Dr. Luca Vitale

081.0624. (int.526)

https://mel.cgiar.org/projects/1847

ForestNavigator (H2020)

ForestNavigator aims at assessing the climate mitigation potential of European forests and forest-based sectors through modelling of policy pathways, consistent with the best standards of LULUCF reporting, and informing the public authorities on the most suitable approach to forest policy and bioeconomy. To reach its ambitious objectives, ForestNavigator will i) harmonize, integrate and continuously update existing datasets by, including national inventories with new remote sensing data and models ii) start from complex forest and climate models and through emulators build them into operational policy modelling tools, iii) integrate biophysical and socio-economic information, iv) consider EU forests and forest bioeconomy in the broader context of other land use and economic sectors, v) rely on input from policy makers and other stakeholders.

ForestNavigator aims to assess the climate mitigation potential of European forests and forestry sectors through modelling policy pathways, consistent with the best LULUCF reporting standards, and to inform public authorities on the most appropriate approach to forest policy and the bio-economy. In the field of multiscale forest modelling, the CNR Laboratory of Forest Modelling is responsible for the simulation of the dynamic growth of Mediterranean forests, in the presence of environmental changes and management scenarios, using the 3D-CMCC-FEM forest model.

Dr. Alessio Collalti

075 5014541

https://www.forestnavigator.eu/index.html

OptForEU (H2020)

The project OPTimising FOREST management decisions for a low-carbon, climate resilient future in Europe (OptFor-EU) will build a Decision Support System (DSS) to provide forest stakeholders and citizens with tailored options for optimising decarbonisation and other Forest Ecosystem Services (FES) across Europe. Based on exploitation of existing data sources, use of novel Essential Forest Decarbonisation Variables and relationships between climate drivers, forest responses and ecosystem services, OptFor-EU has five specific objectives: (1) Provide an improved characterisation of the forest-climate nexus and FES; (2) Utilise end-user focussed process modelling; (3) Empower forest end-users to make informed decisions to enhance forest resilience and decarbonisation; (4) Provide a novel DSS service; and (5) Achieve measurable gains towards the European Green Deal objectives.

The project OPTimising FOREST management decisions for a low-carbon, climate resilient future in Europe (OptFor-EU) aims to build a decision support system (DSS) to provide forest stakeholders and citizens with customised options to optimise decarbonisation and other forest ecosystem services (EES) in Europe. The Laboratory of Forest Modelling is responsible for WP2, which aims to use a combination of forest, land surface and climate models to quantify forest-climate interactions and develop a better representation of forest management practices within land surface and climate models.

Dr. Alessio Collalti

075 5014541

SUPERSCIENCEME - Research is your Re-generation

European Research Night 2021 - Green Deal

Dr Sonia Vivona

0984 841423

Dr Ilaria Guagliardi

0984 841427

SUPERSCIENCEME - Research is your Re-generation

European Research Night in Italy - 2022

Dr Sonia Vivona

0984 841423

Dr Ilaria Guagliardi

0984 841427

INNOMED - Innovative options for water resources management in the Mediterranean

Implementation and use of advanced modelling techniques to quantify the physical and economic effects of alternative land management options on the water cycle.

Dr. Tommaso Caloiero

0984 841464

SISAS - Integrated Study for the Environmental Sustainability of Soils

Monitoring the geochemical quality of soils and the colyure on them

Dr Ilaria Guagliardi

0984 841427

Development of Integrated Web-Based Land Decision Support System Aiming Towards the Implementation of Policies for Agriculture and Environment

The LANDSUPPORT project aims at developing a web-based completely free, open-access GeoSpatial Decision Support System (S-DSS) devoted to:
Support sustainable agriculture and forestry
Evaluate trade-offs between land uses

Dr Angelo Basile

081.0624.27564

Towards climate-smart sustainable management of agricultural soils

The objectives are to develop knowledge, tools and an integrated research community to foster climate-smart sustainable agricultural soil management that:allows sustainable food production;sustains soil biodiversity

Dr Gabriele Buttafuoco

0984 841466

Modelling soil functions and soil threats for mapping soil functions and ecosystem services

Assess, analyse and map soil ecosystem services bundles across European agricultural landscapes, highlighting how soil threats affect the supply of services bundles through adoption of a set of site-specific reference thresholds.

Dr Angelo Basile

081.0624.27564

Efficient, Eco-Friendly, Sustainable Mediterranean Greenhouse Integrated with Artificial Intelligence, Hi-Tech Automation and Control System - acronym SUSMEDHOUSE

The aim of SusMedHouse is to develop a sustainable greenhouse system to enhance the productivity and decrease consumption of resources through self-learning artificial intelligence (AI) with innovative greenhouse applications. To achieve this aim, following objectives will be realised: (1) understanding growers' needs and common greenhouse crop requirements; (2) designing necessary conceptual system and sensor network; (3) developing the AI software; (4) developing user interface; (5) developing a decision support system (DSS); (6) developing innovative biodegradable growth media for cultivation; (7) developing new eco-friendly methods to fight pests and pathogens; (8) demonstrating the system integrity and compatibility on a medium scale greenhouse with AI; (9) optimising solar energy via developing Low-E and solar control coatings; (10) controlling nutrient leakage to prevent eutrophication; (11) testing the established smart greenhouse system on an aquaponic and hydroponic setup. To actualise these objectives, a 2000 m2 greenhouse will be built in Turkey with the following novel technologies carrying out experiments on lettuce, tomatoes and pepper cultivation. Machine learning AI will include greenhouse specialised optimisation mechanisms and sensory network; DSS providing real time data and expected outcomes for actions, pest and pathogen monitoring, early warning system, condition optimiser algorithms, grid and market connected cost calculator; integrated pest and pathogen management owing to image processing and robotic tools. SusMedHouse will also include sunlight and lighting optimisation with the solar control coatings and agroPV panels, real time biosensor and biodegradable growth media development from circular waste streams to diminish the resources used and boost the efficiency. All these systems will be developed by SusMedHouse Consortium with multidisciplinary approach by an experienced team, which is an adept combination of academics, R&D companies and an end-user. The SusMedHouse Consortium is composed by 7 partners from 6 different countries across Europe and the Mediterranean, grouping the entities (CNR, AR&TeCS as coordinator, Antalya Tarım, WOLA, AVIPE, Fraunhofer ISE, and PROTEUS) who focus exactly on those innovative approaches needed in the development and implementation of SusMedHouse Greenhouse Technologies. Thus, the consortium combines the highest expertise from experienced research organisations and SMEs in the field of development and implementation of innovative technologies applied in the Agriculture field and Greenhouse environment. The idea is to combine the best theoretical and practical expertise available in the field in Europe and the Mediterranean region to achieve optimal outcomes in the project.
WEBSITE ADDRESS: https://susmedhouse.eu/

Dr. Roberto Altieri

075 5014540

 

Last update

27 January 2026, 12:19