Innovative sustainable Nordic-Baltic horticulture
InNoBaHort
Self-sufficiency level of fruits and berries in the Nordic and Baltic region is about 10% in Estonia and up to 30% in some of the other countries. One of the priorities of rural development plans is to increase local horticultural production, in accordance with the goals set by European Green Deal, which focuses on reducing the environmental footprint. Horticultural crops often need more inputs than arable crops. The production of pesticides and mineral fertilizers causes greenhouse gases while fertilizer use contributes to freshwater eutrophication. Research-based evidence is needed to reduce the use of fertilizers and pesticides, without compromising yield and quality.
Apple, strawberry, and blackcurrants are the most important fruit and berry crops and will be targeted in InNoBaHort with main objective to increase their total production in the Nordic-Baltic region with a sustainability focus.
The Finnish partners (Luke and SLF) of the InnoBaHort consortium participate in three main objectives of the project: The first is to decrease the use of fertilizers by introducing a novel energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence technique in parallel with plant sap analyses. A 30% reduction in nitrogen use per hectare in fluorescence technique for leaf analyses strawberry is anticipated. The developing and introducing disease forecasting models and low-risk biological pesticides will be the foundation for the second objective, to decrease the number of synthetic fungicide sprays in horticultural crops. The goal is to develop new forecasting systems for European canker in apple and share information on forecasting systems of other diseases. New knowledge will be built in the different countries by research activity and young researcher
mobility, and shared in the network continuously. Regular dissemination to the industry are planned and secures short time delay in practical use of the network knowledge. In total InNoBaHort will provide an important knowledge based step for the Nordic-Baltic horticulture.
