Innovative technologies for sustainable agricultural irrigation in the scenario of climate change

The topic of the talk regards sustainable water resource management in agriculture considering the impact of climate change. It will be introduced the concept of climate change and its impact on agricultural production considering the context of the Mediterranean region. In particular, it will address the connection between climate change and water use efficiency and proposed solutions to mitigate the effect of variation in temperature and rainfall on crop evapotranspiration. It will be extensively discussed the various strategies for agricultural water management such as irrigation scheduling, deficit irrigation, precision irrigation, irrigation with non-conventional water resources, highlighting the main benefits which they allow to obtain in terms of water saving and water pollution control. A case study carried out in Sicily concerning the reuse of treated wastewater obtained by using a pilot-scale constructed wetland system for irrigation of industrial tomato will be presented.

Mario Licata, PhD

Mario Licata has a PhD in Environmental Agronomy and MSc in Agriculture from the Department of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Sciences of the University of Palermo (Italy), where is currently an Associate Professor. He has more than 20 years of experience in innovation projects within agriculture. Key topics studied during his research are agronomy and crop science, including the use of constructed wetland systems for wastewater treatment and the reuse of wastewater for irrigation purpose. He has a long-term experience in both open field activities and laboratory related to crop measurements and analyses. He has worked in several national and international funded projects as researcher, developing new methodologies, experimental protocols and providing data curation. Since 2001 he has published over 100 scientific papers in national and international journals, peer-reviewed journals, books and conference proceedings. He is an editorial board member of some international indexed journals and has been a member of scientific committee of international conferences. He has collaborated in organization of conferences and seminars related to his main research topics. He has given lectures and oral communications at various national and international scientific events. Nowadays, he is a lecturer on various courses at University of Palermo and is the supervisor of some PhD students within the International PhD Course in “Biodiversity in Agriculture and Forestry”.

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