Our strategy for responsible and effective water management

Water availability refers to the volumetric abundance or lack of water in a basin. It can be related to water scarcity, typically calculated as the ratio between human water consumption and the water supply available in each area.

Measurement of the suitability of water for a particular use based on specific physical, chemical, and biological characteristics.

Every individual has the right to water and sanitation services that are physically accessible within or in the immediate vicinity of their home, school, workplace or health institution.

The research is based on improving the use of water resources, through innovative irrigation systems that reduce the use of water and by studying the bacteria and fungi naturally present in the plants’ root system to make their water absorption more efficient. Further to this, selecting plant genotypes with higher growth capacity in different environments by means of advanced high-throughput automated field phenotyping platforms. This area of activity, which specifically studied the response of selected crops to water stress, involved conducting field campaigns in which crops were subjected to different irrigation regimes; these were lower compared to theoretical requirements. The physiological and agronomic responses of the tested genotypes are periodically studied, to assess the effects of reduced water supply. In addition, the bacterial consortia naturally present in the soil and root system are analysed in order to identify strains with promoting characteristics by laboratory analysis on samples taken in the field that can be used as biostimulants (PGPR) in subsequent campaigns Since the start of the project, four test campaigns have been conducted, two of them with oilseed crops, the results of which will help define optimal water resource management practices.

We work to develop new technologies to treat civil and industrial waste water with the option of being able to reuse the treated water in the agricultural sector (experimental). This can play a role in climate change mitigation by reducing the emission of greenhouse gases while contributing to the sequestration of carbon in the soil. Wastewater is also often the most available resource in many arid areas, with constant flow rates throughout the year and few areas of use. The project involves creating innovative prototypes to treat civil waste water with the aim of reusing the treated water for agricultural irrigation. The prototypes will be located at the water purification plant in the municipality of Ferrandina, and will complement the one built by the School of Engineering of the University of Basilicata (a partner of the Hypatia d 'Alessandria Centre), which is already in operation at the Ferrandina purification plant. Once the experimental treatment plant is up and running, the continuation of activities will consist of irrigating oil crops to compare the effects of irrigation with purified wastewater versus irrigation with spring water.

We work for the optimal management of coastal groundwater, on the one hand mitigating the risk linked to the intrusion of the salt wedge that progressively leads to a salinisation of groundwater with a decrease in the volume of available fresh groundwater and, on the other, the risk of subsidence. The project underway at the Research Centre involves numerically modelling coastal aquifers with the aim of simulating their behaviour under varying environmental conditions and flow rates, mainly for irrigation purposes. The main objective is to create a management tool for the groundwater resource that allows its proper use and avoids the risks of salt wedge intrusion and subsidence that could be generated as a result of excessive pumping. The study area is the north-eastern section of the Metaponto plain. The modelling is supplemented with results from sampling campaigns carried out in the study area.