Aims and Approach

Τhe project aims to promote a new sustainable agricultural culture, which will ensure the sustainability of the environment and the proper management of water resources even after the project’s completion. The current plan for investigating the reduction of the amount of irrigation water used in rice cultivation includes:

A) Experimentation in rice cultivation in the area of TOEB Ag. Athanasios. In the pilot fields, covering an area of 82 acres, irrigation scenarios will be applied according to which different amounts of water will be administered, resulting in different water conditions, under which the yield per acre and the quality of the harvested product will be checked.

B) Evaluation of the irrigation scenarios and estimation of the net profit of the producer, taking into account, in the calculation of production costs, among other parameters (fertilization, sowing, etc.), the cost of water based on the charge per unit volume of water consumed.

C) Estimation of the amount of water that ends up at the estuary of the Axios River from the saving of irrigation water in rice cultivation. For this purpose, a management model will be developed, which will simulate the flow of water in the river and irrigation networks, in order to check the satisfaction of the ecological flow at the mouth of the river for each irrigation scenario.