Integrating Soil and Crop Management in the Mediterranean Basin: Past, Present, and Future Opportunities to Mitigate Climate Change.

For centuries, in the Mediterranean basin, agricultural technology has been based on soil and fertilization management and limited irrigation opportunities. Despite water availability is the main limiting factor for crop success, cropping technology has not been always optimized for either water optimization or natural resources conservation (soil and land).

In this communication, we evaluate current potential contribution of typical agricultural practices (mainly soil management, fertilization, irrigation, fallow and crop rotations) to mitigate climate change in the Mediterranean basin. However, under climate change conditions, better use of cropping technologies related with soil and water management will be needed to continue contributing to climate change mitigation.

Mediterranean dryland areas (more than 80 % of the total Mediterranean area basin) are strongly limited by water availability to the crop, determining the increase of biomass and yield. Bare fallow must be avoided and legume crop rotations are not a broad solution since crop legume success is highly dependent on water regime, soil condition and local economics. If water is not available, fertilizer application cannot be highly increased due to the lack of response. Thus, in dryland Mediterranean areas, under climate change conditions possibilities to mitigate global warming are related with soil management conservation integrated with fertilizer application, livestock management and others. All these possibilities will be discussed in the second part of the presentation. Furthermore, in Mediterranean irrigated areas, positive crop response to water application allows the use of several crop rotations and fertilizer application.

The optimization of these techniques should contribute to the balance between soil C sequestration and the reduction of other GHG as methane and nitrous oxide. Some results from different integrated soil and crop management options in the Mediterranean basin and wide scale assessment with modeling tools will be presented.