Code:
ATN/RF-16338-RGP006
Initiative:
Seed fund
FONTAGRO Amount:
USD 30.000
Counterpart Amount:
USD 139.373
Execution time
6 Months
Total Amount:
USD 169.373
Participating countries:
Chile Chile Argentina Argentina Spain Spain Colombia Colombia Israel Israel United States United States Uruguay Uruguay
Funding source:
FONTAGRO Amount 18% Other agencies 0% Counterpart Amount 82%

Executive Summary

Producing more food for a growing population, the increase in competition for the use of water resources among economic sectors, as well as the effects of climate change on agriculture, represent a future with greater restrictions on the availability of water in the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) countries.

Faced with this complex panorama, the notable advances in knowledge for irrigation management, as well as the evident technological developments of the last decades, clearly represent a way to improve the water use efficiency and productivity in agriculture.

To lead and better face these challenges, researchers in irrigation of the main agricultural institutions of the FONT ARO LAC countries, established an international network named Platform for the Irrigation Management for Agriculture 2030-2050, led by INIA (Chile), IRTA (Argentina), INIA (Uruguay), INIA (Spain) and the CSIC (Spain), in partnership with public and private agencies. This Platform will execute actions aimed at the modernization of technological tools for the efficient use of water resources in agriculture.

The Platform is presenting a Consensual Project to the funding source FONT AGRO, which includes actions in four countries in Latin America (Chile, Argentina, Colombia, and Uruguay) and Spain. In these countries technological pilots will be implemented for validation and transfer new technologies. The general objective of the project is to evaluate and transfer the wide range of new technologies to end user, using R + D + I alliances between research centers and private agencies and this way to reduce the existing technological gaps in irrigation management.

The technological solutions to be implemented in the pilots will be varied and with different scales of actions. The emphasis will be placed on robust technologies that, in the long term, lay the foundations for a precision agriculture. 

The technological solution

The technological solutions that will be implemented are referred to:

- Defining the irrigation needs of crops.

- Monitoring the crop development.

- Monitoring the internal water status of crops.

- Monitoring water availability in the soil.

- Modeling of water balance in the soil

- Modeling of water supply and demand in pilot regions

- Registration and control of water rosources at regional scales and irrigation at the predial scale.


Results

I. Establishment of cooperation links between the participating researchers and the creation of a "Platform for Water Management in Agriculture 2030-2050".

II. Preparation of a Consensus Project in which the use of new technologies for the management of water resources is addressed.

ill. That the scales of monitoring and analysis of water resources that are proposed in the Consensus Project will be both at the regional scale (basins) and the scale of intra-farm irrigation.

IV. It is established that the selection of technologies will be made to define the real water needs of the crops, the definition of the water supply, definition of the agronomic productivity of water, technological monitoring of water quality, monitoring of the distribution of water and the establishment of strategies for decision making based on the analysis and processing of the information generated.

Beneficiaries

The direct and indirect beneficiaries will be: farmers, professionals, advisors, transferees, who will know and be trained in the use of new technologies for irrigation. Likewise, the R+D+i groups of public institutions of the countries of the region, particularly (but not exclusively) those of the INIA System of Latin America Countries. The companies that producing, installing and exploiting new technologies to optimize the use of water in regional agriculture. The governments of the countries of the region, which will be associated with the network, so that they can update their policies, introduce/ adopt technologies, incentives and investments in light of the problems and solutions analyzed within the network. irrigators and their institutions, who will be involved in the network from the beginning, showing their problems, posing challenges and sharing solutions with the rest of the project participants from other countries in the region.

Main donors

Participating Organizations

Executor
  • Instituto de Investigaciones Agropecuarias (INIA) - Chile
Co-executor
  • Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria (INIA) - España
  • Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA) - Argentina
  • Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) - España
Associated
  • AAPRESID - Argentina
  • Instituto Nacional de Investigación Agropecuaria (INIA) - Uruguay
  • Universidad Nacional de Colombia (UNAL) - Colombia
  • Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC) - Chile
  • Dirección General de Irrigación de Argentina (DGI) - Argentina
  • Universidad de Castilla - La Mancha (UCLM) - España
  • Universidad de Concepción (UDEC CL) - Chile
  • Agrisat Iberia S.L. (AGRISAT) - España
  • Universidad Nacional de San Juan (UNSJ) - Argentina
  • SupPlant (SupPlant)
  • Universidad de Talca (UTALCA) - Chile
  • Ministerio de Agricultura, Ganadería y Pesca (MAGyP) - Argentina
  • Centro Regional del Agua para Zonas Áridas y Semiáridas de América Latina y el Caribe (CAZALC) - Chile
  • Corporación Regional de Desarrollo Productivo Región de Coquimbo (CRDP) - Chile
  • Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute Fund (DWFGIF) - Estados Unidos
  • Consejo Nacional de Innovación para el Desarrollo (CNID) - Chile
  • Morpho Latinoamérica (MORPHOLA) - Chile
  • Corporación de Servicios y Soluciones Integrales de Colombia (CORPOCOL) - Colombia
  • Empresa de Transformación Agraria, S.A. (TRAGSA) - España

Graphics and data

Financing by country (in USD)
FONTAGRO Amount Other agencies Counterpart Amount

Geolocated Map

Sponsors
BID
IICA
With the support of
Fondo Coreano de Alianza para el Conocimiento en Tecnología e Innovación (KPK)