Currently, water is in a critical situation marked by its limited availability and by increasingly common periods of drought caused by climate change. To this we must add that 80% of water consumption is intended for use in the agricultural sector, which makes it one of the most requested resources. The alternative to compensate for this gap between the high demand for water and the reduced supply is the use of reclaimed water and desalinated water. The FIT4REUSE project helps to solve this situation by providing sustainable solutions adapted to the Mediterranean context.

FIT4REUSE is a 3-year project, funded with 2 million euros under the framework of the PRIMA Initiative, the Association for Research and Innovation in the Mediterranean Area. Specifically, it is a RIA (Research and Innovation Action), approved within the first PRIMA call of 2018, highly competitive and whose success rate was 2%. FIT4REUSE is also the project in which the largest number of countries represented within its consortium appears, including Spain, France, Greece, Italy, Israel, Tunisia and Turkey.

The objective of FIT4REUSE is to provide safe, sustainable water at the local level and accepted for the Mediterranean agricultural sector through the exploitation of unconventional water resources such as reclaimed and desalinated water. To this end, solutions based on nature and innovative technologies applied to agriculture and aquifer recharge will be developed, promoting more extensive use of desalinated water as an alternative and reducing economic, environmental and social impacts as a guarantee of the future.

On July 16, the first general meeting of the FIT4REUSE project took place in Bologna (Italy). The project coordinator, Attilio Toscano, professor of the Department of Agrifood Sciences and Technologies of the University of Bologna, spoke about the analysis that will be carried out of the different technologies and practices for irrigation, in addition to the effects that unconventional water resources have on the ground and the safety of crops for human consumption. The water treatment technologies offered by FIT4REUSE were also announced and will be tested in three pilots located in France, Italy and Tunisia. With this, a comparative study will be carried out between the pilot water treatment plants that use the innovative solutions provided by FIT4REUSE (Italy and Tunisia) and those that use other technologies (France).

BIOAZUL will work on the design of a manual on the use of reclaimed water in agriculture for all professionals in the sector interested in these solutions. The material will also be adapted to the linguistic needs of each region in order to offer simple, useful and easy-to-apply information for users. In addition, Antonia Lorenzo, CEO of BIOAZUL, will lead the team responsible for the exploitation of the results and the development of a future business plan for the innovative solutions proposed by FIT4REUSE.

In general, all the members of the FIT4REUSE consortium are optimistic about achieving the ambitious objectives of the project. There is a lot of work ahead, but the desire to work on alternatives that help increase water availability and curb climate change are even greater.