Water p-ROOF - data collected during fieldwork
Description
Water p-ROOF is a project developed from the merger of two proposals funded by the Planetary Wellbeing action 2020 of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra:
Title: Rain-fed cultivation - Innovative techniques to phenotype drought resistant crops for a sustainable agricultural management in drylands - PI: D’Agostini Francesca.
Title: The Multifunctional Rooftop Garden of Dipòsit de las Aigües Building - PI: Lancelotti Carla
Years of performance: 2021-2022
Place: Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona), Campus de la Ciutadella, Mercé Rodoreda building
Description:
The original project (Rain-fed cultivation - Innovative techniques to phenotype drought resistant crops for a sustainable agricultural management in drylands - PI: D’Agostini Francesca) funded by the call was directed at developing one experimental cultivation in the ICRISAT research centre (Patancheru, India). The experimental cultivations had the objective of building a modern database of crop samples, grown in a controlled environment, to use as comparison for the reconstruction of long-term agricultural systems in drylands. In the face of the COVID-2019 emergency, the project underwent modifications, not so much in the objectives but in the technical development of the research. Not being able to travel to India, the Planetary Wellbeing board authorised the joining of my project with that of Carla Lancelotti (“The Multifunctional Rooftop Garden of Dipòsit de las Aigües Building”) with the aim of building an experimental station on the roof of the Merce Rodoreda building (Campus de la Ciutadella-UPF), where we carried out the same planned research on a reduced, but significant number of samples. Moreover, having saved on transport, I had the opportunity to carry out two experimental cultivations instead of one, increasing the number of species and environmental seasons tested. The new project, merged with that of Carla Lancelotti, was entitled “Water p-ROOF”.
For each experiment, the activity consisted of three main phases: 1. the preparation of the facility (1 month); 2. the experimental cultivation (6 to 9 months depending on the species and season) consisting of sowing, weekly irrigation and lysimeter weighing, plant care and dataset elaboration; 3. the harvesting, drying and storage of the samples (3 months). The first experimental cultivation of sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) and pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum) landraces has been set on the rooftop of Merce Rodoreda building during summer 2021 (from 15th June to 26th November 2021). In this season, three landraces with five replications of each species were grown in two watering treatments in lysimeters (tot. 60), plus 12 pearl millet plants sown in an experimental sandy soil planter without irrigation. The second experimental cultivation involved two species of wheat (Triticum aestivum and Triticum monococcum) during winter 2021-2022 (from 26th November 2021 to 15th July 2022). In this case, 3 landraces with 3 replications were grown for each species in 4 water treatments (tot. 60) in lysimeters. In both seasons transpiration rates of the plants grown in lysimeters have been registered.
Contents available in this repository:
File DataSUMMER2021: Dataset - Excel file that includes the weighing, the watering and the harvesting data of the winter experiment carried out from from 15th June to 26th November 2021
File DataWINTER2021-2022: Dataset - Excel file that includes the weighing, the watering and the harvesting data of the winter experiment carried out from 26th November 2021 to 15th July 2022
File SUMMER 2021 EXPERIMENT: PDF Summary - Summary of the samples collected for summer experiment carried out from from 15th June to 26th November 2021and and metadata.
File WINTER 2022 EXPERIMENT: PDF Summary - Summary of the samples collected of the winter experiment carried out from from 26th November 2021 to 15th July 2022 and metadata
We would like to thank the CASEs research group and in particular to Alessandra Varalli, Garcia-Tuset Nuria, Biagetti Stefano, Dias-Ortega Daniela, Jiménez-Arteaga Carolina, Madella Marco, Marin-García Guillermo, Parque-Pérez Oscar, Roda-Gilabert Xavier, Ruiz-Giralt Abel, Ruiz-Pérez Javier and Santiago-Marrero Carlos for the substantial help with the management of the fieldwork.