- The MED-GOLD project will organise multi-language workshops addressed to users from the olive and olive oil, grape and wine, and durum wheat sectors.
- These workshops will showcase how climate information and services developed by the project can help Mediterranean crops adapt to climate change through a new tool: the MED-GOLD dashboard.
Wine, olive oil and durum wheat products are staples of the Mediterranean diet. Their production rates and quality are highly dependent on weather and climate. These essential features are not guaranteed under future climate change conditions, which are expected to increase vulnerability to crop failure and pest damage.
In order to help adapt Mediterranean crops to climate change, the MED-GOLD project has developed a climate service platform, the Dashboard. The new tool provides climate information at different timescales, including bioclimatic indicators and risk indices developed purposely for the olive oil, wine and durum wheat sectors.
The MED-GOLD Dashboard has been co-developed with end-users from three world leading companies, including the Portuguese winery Sogrape, the Spanish agrifood cooperative DCOOP and the Italian food company Barilla. Its core function is to transform the enormous quantities of raw climatic data into tools that can be used to support important decision-making strategies.
“While lots of weather and climate data are already available, MED-GOLD puts together information from multiple sources focusing on short, medium and long-term periods,” explained Luigi Ponti, an agronomist and one of the researchers from the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA), involved in the project. “This offers a much clearer view of what is happening in terms of climate change or spreading of pests such as the olive fruit fly,” he added.
The multi-language workshops (so far in English, Spanish and Portuguese) will be held during the end of 2021 and beginning of 2022. “We will showcase the Dashboard and discuss the potential usability of the tool in the different sectors, also exploring the conditions required to upscale and use the tool in organisations beyond those involved in the project,” says Marta Bruno-Soares, social scientist at the University of Leeds in charge of the workshops’ organisation.
Due to their participatory nature, the workshops will be addressed to individuals from the olive and olive oil, grape and wine, and durum wheat sectors that currently use climate information in their activities and businesses. Participation is free but the number of places is limited, the organisers noted.
Upcoming workshops
- 9 December 2021: MED-GOLD participatory workshop on the climate service for the olive and olive oil sector (in Spanish)
- 13 December 2021: MED-GOLD participatory workshop on the climate service for the wine sector (in English)
- 17 January 2022: MED-GOLD participatory workshop on the climate service for the olive and olive oil sector (in English)
- 2 February 2022: MED-GOLD participatory workshop on the climate service for the wine sector (in Portuguese)
- 15 February 2022: MED-GOLD & MEDCLIV participatory workshop on the climate service for the wine sector (in Italian)
- 22 February 2022: MED-GOLD participatory workshop on the climate service for the olive and olive oil sector (in Italian)
More information and updates regarding new multi-language workshops that will be scheduled soon can be found in the project events page.
Written by Marta Terrado (Barcelona Supercomputing Center)
