The project TomaBioTec started in January with the aim of developing and validating innovative solutions that contribute to a more sustainable and efficient production of tomatoes in the industry, in line with the current challenges of the agri-food sector, by integrating biotechnology and digital technologies.
The initiative aims to evaluate, under real field conditions, the effectiveness and efficiency of a biosolution with bioprotective and/or biostimulant properties, developed by InnovPlantProtect (InPP), This could help improve the quality and productivity of industrial tomato crops.
The rehearsals take place at Alentejo and Spanish Extremadura and combine traditional agronomic methods with advanced technologies, such as drones, multispectral sensors and artificial intelligence models. This approach allows detailed monitoring of the health of the crop, the presence of pests and diseases and the impact of the bioproduct throughout the production cycle.
The project “TomaBioTec: New biological and digital solutions for tomato crop protection and fertilization” is led by the InPP, in collaboration with the Centro Tecnológico Nacional Agroalimentario Extremadura (CTAEX) and Cordeiro Group, and was selected as one of the winners of the 7th edition of the Promove Program, The prize was awarded by the “la Caixa” Foundation, in partnership with Banco BPI and the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), in the category of innovative pilot projects.
This project reinforces the commitment to biological and digital solutions as drivers of more sustainable, competitive agriculture based on scientific evidence, with a direct impact on producers and industry.
InnovPlantProtect (InPP) was present at the XVI National Maize Congress, which also included the 2nd Meeting of Cereal Crops, organized by ANPROMIS, in collaboration with ANPOC and AOP. The event took place on February 11 and 12 at CNEMA in Santarém, bringing together national and international experts to discuss the sector's main challenges.
António Saraiva, Executive Director of InPP, took part in the panel “Cereal Production: What technical challenges are we facing?”, where he highlighted the decisive role of research in responding to the emerging challenges of cereal production, in a context of growing demographic, environmental and economic pressure.
“I'm proud that today, after seven years, we have 28 researchers working full-time on this topic, 12 of whom have PhDs, with experience in crops such as rice, which has been central to our work,” he said, emphasizing the multifunctional and international nature of InPP's teams.
He also pointed out that the work being done extends beyond rice to include maize, through ongoing projects and new operational groups focused on emerging crop problems. Among the initiatives in the spotlight is an application to Horizon Europe focused on developing improved and more resilient varieties.
For António Saraiva, anticipation is the key to success: “These challenges can't wait too long to be discussed or resolved. The sooner we anticipate the issues, the easier, more effective and more economical the solutions will be.”
In a debate that also marked the 40th anniversary of Portugal's integration into Europe and the role of the Common Agricultural Policy in the cohesion of the European Union, one message was clear across the board: “Climate change is the biggest threat we have.”
InPP thus reaffirms its commitment to innovation, science and the development of sustainable solutions for the future of cereal crops.
There are days when science begins long before you enter the laboratory or the field. It starts at dawn, when the alarm clock goes off too early. When you mentally review the day's list: an experiment that can't be missed, a trip to the field that depends on the weather, an unfinished report, a meeting scheduled at the wrong time. In between, someone to wake up, someone to drop off, someone to call. And yet science moves forward.
At InnovPlantProtect, there are now 15 women who give a face to the science and innovation developed here. Women who represent commitment, demand, resilience, overcoming, quality, talent, excellence and creativity. But they are only part of a greater whole. There are many more - and each one brings with it a story that doesn't fit into a CV, a patent application or an article.
Today, February 11th, marks the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, a UNESCO initiative that underlines the importance of the female role in the production of scientific and technological knowledge and the need to continue promoting equal access to careers in science and innovation. Portugal has encouraging figures: women represent almost 50% researchers in the country. It's a relevant figure, reflecting decades of progress. But the figures don't show what happens between them.
Because science, for many women, is made up of fragile balances.
There are women with intense family lives, others with more solitary journeys, still others who build support networks outside traditional models, with effort and creativity. There are difficult choices and decisions, unexpected circumstances, forced breaks, changes of pace, different phases of life. All legitimate. Many are invisible when you only look at the end result of a project, an article or a biosolution developed. - but they all influence the paths of science.
One day, one of our researchers - let's just call her that - told us that she had finished a field trial close to sunset. The phone rang while she was putting away her materials. It was the school. A delay. Nothing extraordinary. It was business as usual. She came home exhausted, with dirt still on her boots, opened her computer after dinner and went back to her data, because the experiment couldn't wait. “It wasn't a heroic day,” she said. “It was just a normal day.”
And perhaps that is what is most remarkable.
In the field of crop protection, the work is demanding, technical and often unpredictable. It takes place in the laboratory and in the field, between strict protocols and decisions made under real conditions. It requires persistence, adaptability, attention to detail and an integrated view of problems. Characteristics that so many women bring with them - not by nature, but by experience, by path, by everything they have learned to manage at the same time.
Each personal story profoundly shapes the way we do science. The doubts, the challenges, the forced breaks, the changes of pace, the new beginnings. None of this is left at the laboratory door. It all silently enters into the way we observe, question and build knowledge.
To celebrate the International Day of Women and Girls in Science is to recognise this reality as a whole. It is to honour the women who continue to do science despite the challenges — and often because of them. And it is to remember that innovation is also born from lives fully lived, shaped by imperfection, effort and courage.
Today we celebrate them. Not just for what they produce, but for all that they are. In science, in the field, in the laboratory - and in the life that happens in between.
InnovPlantProtect (InPP) celebrated during the 38th Ovibeja two partnership protocols, with the Centro Operativo e de Tecnologia de Regadio (COTR) and with the Portugal Nuts - Dried Fruit Promotion Association.
Within the scope of the partnership with COTR, InPP proposes to develop, together with the competence center for national irrigation and its members, strategies to solve the challenges posed to agricultural production by pests and diseases, as well as providing services to the organization's member partners. The COTR, for its part, is willing to provide support in mapping the main challenges facing its members in terms of pests and diseases, and to make them aware of the InPP and its capabilities.
Gonçalo Morais Tristão, chairman of the board of COTR, and Pedro Fevereiro, executive director of InPP
The protocol with Portugal Nuts aims to collaborate on projects on the challenges facing nuts, including the development of new sustainable products and analytical and digital services for crop protection against pests and diseases, particularly for nut crops. Portugal Nuts, for its part, aims to put its members in touch with the InPP, introduce them to the services provided by CoLAB and support the InPP in identifying producers who meet the conditions for carrying out pilot projects and field trials.
João Roseiro, member of the board of Portugal Nuts, representing SLM Partners, and Pedro Fevereiro, executive director of InPP
The collaborative laboratory (CoLAB) InnovPlantProtect (InPP) was present at the Ovibeja 2022, no stand 64 of Institutional Pavilion, The event will take place at the Manuel de Castro e Brito Fair and Exhibition Park, in Beja, between April 21 and 25, 2022.
At the stand, it was possible to find out more about InPP's activity in the field of developing bio-inspired solutions for protecting crops against pests and diseases, including specific services and products that CoLAB is already prepared to offer to different sectors.
Part of the 33-strong team of researchers was on site throughout the five days of the fair to demonstrate InPP's various capabilities to visitors.
The Department of New Biopesticides, for example, showed biological control agents (BCA) - fungi and bacteria in Petri dishes - as well as healthy rice plants infected with the fungus Magnaportheoryzae, which causes rice pyriculariosis, and some BCA which inhibit the M. oryzae. The Department of Formulations and Process Development took samples demonstrating the encapsulation of active biocontrol agents (pre- and post-processing), allowing visitors to produce alginate “balls” (small capsules) with their own hands.
Researchers from the Department of Data Management and Risk Analysis talked about microbiome analysis and the development of risk models, and demonstrated the dashboard of a weather calculator developed at InPP. In terms of Protection of Specific Crops, It was also possible to learn more about the laboratory services we offer, namely molecular identification and diagnosis, as well as how biocontrol tests work. in vitro, and monitor the work carried out on the wheat disease yellow rust, among many others.
Videos, photos and presentations were always available on a monitor, so that visitors could virtually “enter” our house, laboratories, fieldwork, events and other initiatives, as well as chat with the team present to welcome them.
Within the Saturday, April 23rd at 3pm, In the ACOS Auditorium, the InPP organized a colloquium on the subject of “Protecting crops to feed the world: from soil microorganisms to pest and disease monitoring techniques”.
The executive director of InPP took part in this conference, Pedro February, who presented CoLAB, iLaria Marengo, director of the Monitoring and Diagnostics department, who spoke about remote sensing applied to crop protection, and Ricardo Ramiro, director of the Data Management and Risk Analysis department, who addressed the topic of the soil microbiome.
Pedro Fevereiro also took part in the seminar ACOS - The Southern Farmers' Association organized on the 23rd at 10:30 a.m., entitled “How to feed the planet?”, the theme of Ovibeja 2022, at the ACOS Auditorium, and at the colloquium “The European Green Agenda. Agricultural sustainability and food sovereignty”, which took place at the Friday, April 22nd at 4pm, at the Expobeja Auditorium.
OTHER ACTIVITIES
“Consultório das Plantas” was the name of the activity aimed at the youngest that InPP held on Saturday 23rd, at around 4pm, as part of the programming of the Alentejo Agricultural and Agri-Food Biotechnology Center (Centro de Biotecnologia Agricola e Agro-Alimentar do Alentejo) (CEBAL) at the 38th Ovibeja.
To demonstrate the importance of treating diseased plants with environmentally sustainable solutions, InPP researcher Tânia Pinto took samples of olive trees infected with peacock's eye, a disease caused by the fungus Spilocaea oleaginea, and Petri dishes with fungi, to explain the importance of analyzing the pathogen in search of a solution.
Dr. Tânia sprayed the diseased sample with a “biomedicine” spray and showed examples of healthy olive trees so that the young visitors could see the difference.
Within the sunday late morning, The executive director of InPP, Pedro Fevereiro, will be with CEBAL for an informal chat with visitors.
PARTNERSHIP PROTOCOLS
At Ovibeja, InPP signed two partnership protocols with COTR - Centro Operativo e de Tecnologia de Regadio and Portugal Nuts - Associação Promoção Frutos Secos, with a view to collaborating in the development of solutions to protect crops against pests and diseases. Read more.
Today, three classes from Alcáçova Primary School planted nearly two dozen trees next to the Amoreira Aqueduct in Elvas, in an initiative that brought together the school, the InnovPlantProtect sustainability team, the Elven municipality and Bolschare.
It was with tiny hands and feet, but a lot of gumption and willpower, that around 50 students from the 2nd, 3rd and 4th years of school from the Alcáçova Primary School, In Elvas, they took shovels, hoes, watering cans, buckets and 19 one-meter-high almond trees to plant them in the area around the so-called “Amoreira arches” in Rossio de São Francisco, next to the historic Elven aqueduct.
They had the help of the teachers, the technicians from SOF Jardins and the researchers from the sustainability team of the InnovPlantProtect (InPP), InPP Greeners, which launched this action, Cláudia Almeida Silva, Cátia Patrício, Cristina Azevedo e Joana Castro. And the weather: after initially being planned to mark World Tree Day 2022, on March 21, the activity took place this afternoon, April 6, with the sun shining.
The area where the planting took place belongs to the Elvas City Council (CME) and the almond trees were donated by Bolschare. With this action, InPP Greeners sought to make elementary school students aware of the importance of trees for life. The almond trees were chosen because not only are they part of the work being carried out by InPP, but they are also of great economic interest to the region and are very beautiful landscape trees.
The CME immediately embraced this initiative “for obvious reasons”, says Councillor Hermenegildo Rodrigues, who was on the ground today accompanying the activities. “As decision-makers, we have to value changes in habits and attitudes when it comes to the ecological footprint and, above all, involve those who will be the future decision-makers,” said the councillor.
Simão, aged 7, was one of those who tried his hand at eating an almond - there are already mature almond trees there; he was surprised when InPP department director and Greeners member Cristina Azevedo showed the children the drupe's epicarp, with its characteristic green color. For Simão, “if there weren't trees, the world wouldn't have trees”, which are also very important “because they give us apples and pears”.
This was “a very rich initiative, because the students need this kind of activity, which involves them, associates them with the city and gives them the ‘power to do’”, observed Ana Teresa Babinha, a 2nd grade teacher. “And there was an opportunity for everyone to do it, to try their hand at planting,” said the teacher, who praised the action for getting the children to actually “get their hands dirty”.
Ana Teresa Babinha also highlighted the fact that the students will now be responsible for looking after these almond trees, in a system yet to be defined by the school. What's more, it's an activity “that will come to life in the classroom”, because it's an opportunity to approach the topic of the importance of trees in a new way in the context of formal learning.
The InPP Greeners are InnovPlantProtect's (InPP) sustainability team, created at the end of 2021 to share knowledge and good practices that lead to the creation of more sustainable laboratories and institutions, as well as promoting the adoption of more sustainable behaviors by all citizens. Follow them on Twitter at @InPPGreeners or contact them by email at inpp.greeners@iplantprotect.pt.
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