Paris, 4 April 2025 - CarbonFarm’s monitoring technologies, deployed in Portugal’s Lower Mondego Valley as part of the PROMEDRICE project “Effective farming practices to protect water resources in Mediterranean rice-based agroecosystems,” were presented at the 2025 World Summit on Crop Science and Engineering in Paris.
Launched in 2022, PROMEDRICE aims to develop and promote site-specific farming practices that reduce soil and water contamination while improving productivity and water-use efficiency in Mediterranean rice systems. It brings together partners from six countries—including five universities, three research centres, and two SMEs—with complementary expertise across irrigation management, crop production, and environmental science. As part of this project, CarbonFarm is collaborating with the Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra’s Research Centre for Natural Resources, Environment and Society (CERNAS).
During the summit, Professor José Manuel Gonçalves shared insights from a study on Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD) conducted in the Lower Mondego Valley in central Portugal, where rice is typically grown in paddies irrigated through continuous flooding.
To support this initiative, CarbonFarm deployed ground sensors that provided real-time data on the field’s water level. This enabled a more precise irrigation scheduling, reduced the labor needed for manual data collection, and helped prevent crop water stress. The study showed that sensor-based automation effectively supports the wider adoption of AWD, accelerating the shift to low-emission, water-efficient farming.
More details on the presentation are available in the official WSCSE 2025 Abstract Book:
https://www.scientificsummits.org/cms/pdfs/WSCSE-2025_abstract_book.pdf