2023-08-31 00:57:54
The European project Perfect Lifeof which the research group is a part Environmental pollutants in Food Safety from the Fisabio Foundationhas shown that it is possible to reduce phytosanitary products released into the environment by more than 20 percent in citrus crops and vineyards of the Valencian Community.
This has been highlighted in a statement by Fisabio, who has indicated that phytosanitary products are chemical mixtures that are used to protect plants and their products from harmful organisms and has specified that their intensive use “can lead to health problems (such as dermatological or respiratory) by contact or direct inhalation and environmental problems“.
“Demonstrate that environmental contamination by airborne pesticides and their associated metabolites can be reduced through volume adjustment tools and technologies that reduce risk to wildlife and humans”
In this sense, the foundation has explained that researchers and researchers who has worked on this project set themselves the objective of “demonstrating that it is possible to reduce environmental contamination by pesticides and their associated metabolites in the air through volume adjustment tools and technologies that reduce the risk to fauna, flora and humans “.
The doctor Clara Coscolláprincipal investigator for Fisabio in this project and head of the group Environmental pollutants in Food Safetyhas indicated that work has been carried out “analyzing the pesticide losses to air and soil in different applications in orange groves and vineyards in the Valencian Community (Spain) and Turin (Italy)respectively”.
Coscollá has added that “the pesticide exposure via inhalation and via dermal deposition” and that “the concentration of Pesticide metabolites in the urine of people exposed to them“.
cost savings
Likewise, in the five years in which this project has been carried out, it has been shown that the cost savings generated by the use of the applications and tools developed in it “is very significant, with reductions of up to 74% of the volume of phytosanitary product used and, even, fuel savings of up to 800 liters per hundred hectares”.
In addition, the implementation of the method Perfect Life It saves time for people who work in the fields of up to almost one hundred hours per hundred hectares treated“, added Fisabio, who specified that “this is due to the fact that by reducing the volume applied, it is not necessary to refill the tank with the products so frequently”.
Clara Coscollá has also highlighted that the use of the tools of the Perfect Life in the fields and in the day-to-day lives of farmers would mean “a reduction in CO2 emissions of up to 2,000 kilograms for every hundred hectares treated”.
Collaboration between entities
The consortium of this project, coordinated by the Fundación Centro de Estudios Ambientales del Mediterráneo (CEAM), has as partners the Valencian Institute of Agricultural Investigations (IVIA)–both centers attached to the Ministry of Agriculture–, the Fundación para Promotion of the Health and Biomedical Research of the Valencian Community (Fisabio), the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), the Institut Français de le Vigne et du Vin (IFV), the company Fossil Ion Technology (FIT), the University of Turin (UNITO) and the Federation of Agricultural Cooperatives of the Valencian Community.
Fisabio has pointed out that thanks to this last entity it has been possible to count on the project with several farmers who have ceded their fields and lands to be able to carry out the studies.
To present the results, within the framework of the project, a final event has been held. These conferences have been developed in the Fisabio assembly hall and in Museros (Valencia), where a demonstration has been carried out in the experimental field of Anecoop.
European financing Life is a financing instrument of the European Union for the environment and climate action in order to contribute to the implementation, updating and development of environmental and climate legislation and policy. The Perfect Life project, which ended this August, has received financing of more than 2 million euros.
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