Cluster 6 - NUTRIBUDGET

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Introduction

NUTRIBUDGET, Optimisation of nutrient budget in agriculture, is a 48-month long research project funded with 7.1 million € by the EU in the framework of the Horizon Europe call HORIZON-CL6-2021-ZEROPOLLUTION-01. It started in September 2022 and is coordinated by the Ghent University (Belgium). The NUTRIBUDGET project brings together 17 partners from 9 European countries to optimize nutrient management across different agricultural production systems and regions in the EU to reduce pollution due to the excessive use of nutrients and nutrient losses to the environment.

Project description

The NutriBudget aims to develop the prototype of a first-of-its-kind integrated nutrient management platform, called “NutriPlatform”, in various regions across Europe. The NutriPlatform will operate as a decision-support tool for farmers, advisors and regional authorities. Before the end of the project we aim that this prototype (as a stand-alone or integrated in the existing EC promoted FaST tool for nutrient management) will be tested and used by at least 40.000 farmers across Europe. First, the development of the NutriPlatform will be based on the algorithms of two advanced newly developed holistic NutriModels that quantify the impact of agronomic mitigation measures to optimise nutrient budget and flow across scales (from farm to Europe), across elements (C) and nutrients (N, P, K, S, Ca, Mg, Cu and Zn) and by looking at various agronomic and environmental targets. The mitigation measures will be derived from (I) existing knowledge and (II) new data from field experiments with innovative mitigation measures that connect animal and crop production via agro-processing industries in 5 pilot regions in 4 different climate regions in Europe. Secondly, these measures will be linked to relevant monitoring indicators, called “NutriKPIs”, for agronomic performance in different farming systems, nutrient emissions and impact on biodiversity. Thereby, NutriBudget will contribute to systemically optimize nutrient management across different agricultural production systems and regions in the EU to reduce pollution due to the excessive use of nutrients and nutrient losses to the environment.

Objectives

These are the specific objectives of NUTRIBUDGET:

  • Develop 1 Mitigation Measures Catalogue of at least 50 of the best region-specific practices
  • Develop 2 integrated NutriModels to improve current models on nutrient budgets and flows
  • Determine at least 10 roadmaps to optimise the nutrient management plans
  • Develop policy recommendations in at least 3 policy areas: the CAP, Environmental regulations and/or directives and carbon farming/EU ETS
  • Co-create nutrient data standards according to an interactive Nutri-actor approach, as well as a critical performance indicator framework with five categories of agronomic and environmental indicators (NutriKPIs)
  • Develop with farmers Nutriplatform DST, implement and valorise the DST within at least 4 regional farming networks, reaching at least 40.000 target users, in each of the four climate zones
  • Establish a Nutri-actor network that will include 250 key organisations and actors (farmer networks, farm advisors, research institutes, biobased industries, regional authorities, EU policy makers, etc), representing 20 regions. The actors to be involved in at least 23 interactive co-creation and validation sessions

Role of Ghent University

Ghent University is the coordinator of the NUTRIBUDGET project, and as such deals with all administrative aspects. Furthermore, it is the leader of WP1 that aims to develop the Mitigation Measures Catalogue of at least 50 of the best region-specific practices. Finally, in WP4 Ghent University leads Atlantic pilot region where four agronomic mitigation measures will be experimentally tested for their performance to close the nutrient cycle.

Website

NUTRIBUDGET

Contact

Prof. Erik Meers and Dr. Ivona Sigurnjak
Department of Green Chemistry and Technology
Laboratory for BioResource recovery
Phone number: +32 9 264 93 96
E-mail: Erik Meers  and Ivona Sigurnjak

Funding info

vlag plat funded by the eu.JPG

Disclaimer
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the authority can be held responsible for them.