On September 7, 2022 the Kick-off Meeting of the project "ReMe-diation: Resilient Mediterranean with a holistic approach to sustainable agriculture: Addressing challenges of water, soil, energy and biodiversity" took place online.

"ReMe-diation" is funded by the Prima programme, which is supported under Horizon 2020, the European Union's Framework Programme for Research and Innovation.

This project has 5 partners from Germany (Hamburg University of Technology), Turkey (Ankara University and Akdeniz University), Portugal (University of Beira Interior) and Greece (Technical University of Crete).

TUC partner is led by Assistant Professor Alexandros Stefanakis of the School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering.

The overarching goal of the project is to introduce sustainable practices and close the loop of waste in Mediterranean agriculture in order to provide socio-economic (by presenting new products) and environmental benefits (by increasing biodiversity and conserving resources such as soil and water) through different methods that contribute to the zero-pollution ambition and resource recovery. The project includes:

• Intercropping experiments in Antalya, Turkey, where chickpeas and lentils will be sown in winter between the rows of olive trees, whereas peanuts will be used in summer. The effect of intercropping on soil quality, olive, olive oil and crop yield will be investigated [Ankara University] 
• Biochar production from residual biomass from oilve and cork planattions and solid digestate will be produced in Crete by the Technical University of Crete in Greece. It will be used firstly, to enhance the performance of Constructed Wetlands for wastewater treatment and secondly as soil amendment in crops experiments.
• Constructed wetlands for treatment of wastewater produced during olives processing in olive mills (Greece) and during cork processing (Portugal). Experiments at pilot-scale will be carried out by the University of Beira Interior and the Technical University of Crete.
• High-value added products: analysis of biomass, pretreatment tests at lab-scale will be carried out by Ankrara University and Akdeniz University in Turkey. The liquid fraction from the pre-treatment will be analysed in terms of valuable products such as fermentable sugars, phenolics and oligosaccharides.
• Biogas production: the biogas potential of the different solid organic mass flows (i.e. wastewater sediments, lignocellulosic agricultural/industrial residues and reed biomass grown in the wetlands) will be determined experimentally at Hamburg University of Technology (Germany)

By bringing together an interdisciplinary international team with diverse expertise in the different aspects of the project, ReMe-diation seeks to provide both the knowledge on the various methods and techniques to improve the agricultural yield and increase the farmers’ income and demonstration of the concepts to a variety of stakeholders in the Mediterranean area. The outcomes will benefit the scientific community but also the water/waste authorities, technology providers, the local communities and the public in general.