The XI International Workshop on Sap Flow took place in Hyytiälä, Finland from 8^th - 11^th October 2019.The workshop addressed topics concerning plant - water relations and their measurement and was centred on plant water transport. VISCA project was presented in the workshop, precisely, on the topic of 'Estimating transpiration coefficients of grapevines (Vitis vinifera L.) "Tempranillo" subjected to delayed pruning' by IRTA. The poster of the event can be downloaded from here.

Agriculture, including food-related industries and services, is one of the main economic sectors in the EU which provides over 44 million jobs (EC, 2019). The diverse climate, fertile soil, quality standards and technical expertise of the European farmers have made the EU a leading actor in this sector globally.

However, agriculture is currently facing deep economic, technological and regulatory changes where the impacts of climate change and resulting natural disasters exacerbate the challenges. That’s why the EU has been investing in diverse projects and initiatives to foster innovation and improve the efficiency of this sector.

With the support of the Common Dissemination Booster team, a new publication titled: 'Providing Innovative Solutions to Improve the Efficiency of the Agriculture Sector' presents a cluster of 4 innovative EU-funded projects VISCA, WEAM4i, OpIRIS & IRRIMAN. It briefly presents the issues and challenges as well as the results and solutions brought by these projects. You may click here to download the 2-pager.

VISCA project - which has developed a climate service and a Decision Support System to make European wine industry resilient to climate change and to climate variability - organized a training at LINKS Foundation premises, in Torino on 4th-5th July 2019.

The main objective of the training was to show the end-users how to use the developed tool in a practical way as well as how to interpret the model outputs. The training also illustrated the ways to access to climate information while providing vineyard data by the end-users. During the training, VISCA consortium, including the 3 end-users, provided feedback and a list of improvements, they also presented, discussed and signed a protocol in order to deepen the evaluation of the DSS. Finally, different sessions about the commercial exploitation plan and the upcoming communication activities were presented and discussed.

This meeting was very useful for the consortium to share and discuss  the recent achievements and also to coordinate the efforts for facing the last challenges of the project which terminates in April 2020.

The future and sustainability of the wine sector in economic, social and environmental terms were the focus themes of the 11th Alentejo Vine and Wine Symposium which took place on 15, 16 and 17 May in Évora, at the Auditory of the Alentejo Regional Coordination and Development Commission with the participation of 200 representatives of researchers, experts and end-users in viticulture and oenology fields. VISCA project was presented by the University of Porto & SYMINGTON at 11th Alentejo Viticulture Symposium. 

For further information on the event, check the official website.

VISCA Insights is a series of short interviews with experts working in agriculture, wine production or climate services. Watch the 1st interview with Dr. Ramzi Belkhodja, Coordinator of Plant Production at CIHEAM Zaragoza discussing the role of climate services in climate change adaptation, and how we can build trust on the prediction of climate services among the agricultural community!