Networking
Networking will play a crucial role in the LIFE VINOSHIELD project, facilitating the exchange of knowledge, best practices, and project outcomes with institutional and non-institutional stakeholders, bodies, and committees.
Strong collaboration with other LIFE projects focused on climate change mitigation and related policy areas—such as sustainable agriculture, green infrastructure, and biodiversity conservation—will create synergies and maximize the project’s impact.
Communication with beneficiaries of similar projects will foster a dynamic knowledge-sharing environment, enhancing visibility and impact beyond the project’s duration. All networking efforts will be systematically documented in project deliverables, ensuring continuity and long-term collaboration beyond the LIFE VINOSHIELD timeline.
LIFE Natural Agro
The project aims to drive European viticulture towards more efficient, sustainable, toxic-free crop protection, through reducing and even eliminating the use of xenobiotic compounds in plant protection products (PPPs).
The mission of the Natural Agro project is to adopt agricultural production, particularly for vines, more respectful of the environment by developing an effective and sustainable strategy to fight against parasitic diseases. Based on the importance, in particular economic, of the cultivation of grapevines in Europe, the project aims to reduce the use of pesticides and fertilizers by proposing a new innovative solution to the current market. Winegrowers are dependent on the use of chemical pesticides as grapevine is susceptible to many fungal diseases, such as Downy Mildew (DM) and Grapevine Trunk Diseases (GTD), which have the potential to cause serious crop damage and substantial economic losses to EU winegrowers.
As the primary treatment of such diseases, Copper (Cu) intensive PPPs are considered the most important antifungal product in organic viticulture. However, the dependence on Cu PPPs is of urgent concern, due to the increasing, toxic accumulation of Cu in soil and water, and its potential assimilation into the fruit, with severe impact on human health.