The demand for organic vegetables is rising rapidly but cannot be met by current agronomic methods. The lack of attention for biodiversity and soil fertility of current practices damages the credibility of organic products. Conventional sources of fertilizers need to be replaced by organic sources.

SUREVEG will develop and implement new diversified, resource-efficient, and intensive vegetable cropping systems to meet the needs of the organic vegetable sector comprising ecological intensification, resilience, fertilization, resource-efficiency, and biodiversity.

The systems are based on strip-cropping, and fertility strategies combined from recycling of waste and plant-based soil-improvers and fertilizers.

The project aims to develop production methods based on sustainable use of soil and landscape resources in order to ensure European citizens with balanced and safe food. The impact will be to significantly decrease the dependency on biopesticides and non-organic fertilizers and enhancing the positive environmental impacts on water and soil quality and landscape biodiversity. This will boost credibility and productivity of organic vegetables.  

Expected results:

• Functional biodiversity (above- and belowground) for biocontrol
• Role of vegetable fields for pollination and biodiversity
• Local recycling of organic plant-based nutrients
• Carbon for soil fertility and storage
• Nutrient use efficiency of crops
• Decrease N losses to the environment
• Less dependency of production on external inputs