Imagine if farmers had a digital guidebook that proved exactly how much money and effort they save by planting beans and peas instead of using chemical fertilizers. This project uses sensors and smart software to measure the hidden benefits of these plants, like how they naturally feed the soil. It's like giving farmers a calculator to see the real profit of being eco-friendly.
Legumes are undervalued by farmers because their environmental benefits are hard to measure, leading to a low adoption rate of only 2-6% of farmland.
A Collaborative Multicriteria Decision Support System (DSS) and a set of indicators to quantify ecosystem services using sensors and machine learning.
If you are a software provider dealing with a lack of actionable soil health data — this project developed a Collaborative Multicriteria Decision Support System (DSS) that helps farmers choose the best legume species for their specific land. This allows you to integrate precise crop recommendations into your platform.
If you are a producer dealing with high fertilizer costs and soil degradation — this project developed methods to quantify nitrogen fixation and soil functions. This helps you reduce chemical inputs while maintaining yields through diversified cropping systems.
If you are a manufacturer dealing with a reliance on imported legumes — this project benchmarks EU-grown legumes against imports using life-cycle and cost-benefit analyses. This provides the data needed to secure local, sustainable supply chains.
Based on available project data, the project aims to reduce fertilizer use and emissions, which can lower operational costs for farmers through improved nitrogen cycles.
The project uses multi-location trials across 11 countries and living labs to ensure that the tools and practices can be applied rapidly and at scale.
Based on available project data, the specific licensing terms are not mentioned, but the project focuses on co-creating tools for farmers, advisers, and policy makers.
Yes, the results are designed to support the European Green Deal, Farm to Fork, and the Soil Deal for Europe.
The project period runs from 2024-01-01 to 2028-02-29, suggesting that fully validated tools will be available toward the end of this window.
The consortium is heavily research-oriented, featuring 7 universities and 6 research institutes, but it maintains a practical edge with 2 industry partners and 5 SMEs. With 21 partners across 11 countries, the project has a strong geographic reach to validate data across different European climates, though the industry ratio is relatively low at 10%.
Contact Universiteit Gent in Belgium
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