RIDECORED: Excellence Network for saving water in irrigation based on the results of the Consolider-Rideco project

Investigador principal:
Entitats finançadores:
Freshwater is a vital resource of the planet. Even though humans need relatively small amounts of water for drinking, the requirements to produce their food are much higher, to the point that irrigated agriculture is the largest consumer of water on Earth. In areas such as Spain, future water scarcity threatens the sustainability of its horticultural industry and research is needed to save irrigation water.
This was the objective of a 6 -year research program funded under the CONSOLIDER-RIDECO grant that ended at the end of 2012. Experiments and models were used by five groups, representing more than half of the scientific production in Spain on irrigation, to advance the knowledge on how to reduce irrigation water use and to enhance water productivity in tree crops and vines. The external international reviewers of the program stated that the RIDECO team represented the strongest research effort on deficit irrigation in the world.
The project needed additional efforts to increase its impact on the irrigation community; thus the objective is to further increase the impact of RIDECO by effective networking with a variety of stakeholders and potential users of the results. RIDECORED is a network of excellence which will aim at:
- Disseminate RIDECO results to users in the public and private sectors.
- Ensure the collaboration among RIDECO partners by completing the analyses of long-term experiments and by producing specific, useful recommendations to achieve greater impact.
- Propose joint activities and grant proposals for national and international calls (H2020 and others).
- Open the current team to the participation of other research groups to create a hub of irrigation research activities.
RIDECORED will last two years and, in addition to increase the impact of RIDECO, it will also contribute to maintain the prominent position of Spanish irrigation research.