FIRST TRAINING DAY PROJECT PEANUTPUGLIA
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On March 1, 2022, at 4:00 PM, the first training day of the PEANUTPUGLIA project took place, funded under the RDP Puglia 2014-2020 - SM 16.2 "Support for pilot projects and the development of new products, practices, processes, and technologies," with a total amount of €452,714.00. The activity was coordinated by the DAFNE Department (University of Foggia, a project partner), which annually organizes Paths for Transversal Skills and Orientation (PCTO) for high school students in their third year. The paths have a total duration of 25 hours, including activities with university professors, the completion of a project work, and a final feedback meeting, guaranteeing the acquisition of 1 university CFU "in advance" to students attending all lessons.
Students were presented with the premises for which the project was written and the objectives to be achieved. For the academic year 2021/22, the Sustainable Agriculture course was reintroduced, but based on the experiences gained by DAFNE researchers, a module on Plant Growth Promoting Bacteria (biostimulating microorganisms) was added, which falls within the activities of WP3 of the Project. The project aims to: study and develop the most suitable varietal selection for the territory; develop and test innovative cultivation techniques to make the crop profitable and competitive in the Puglia region; test the adaptability of current harvesting machines or the need to introduce specific ones to maximize yields in this phase; test and refine the best storage and conditioning techniques for fruits in the post-harvest phase to offer high-quality products with the required specifications to the market.
Why peanuts?
Peanuts, belonging to the legume family, are an improvement crop for the soil, favored by a fast cycle, with planting in early May and harvesting at the end of September. In legume cultivation, Puglia is one of the leading regions in the South in terms of surface area and volumes produced, second only to Molise (ISTAT), and can boast many typical varieties. The demand for dried fruits in general, including peanuts, has been steadily increasing for several years in Italy and in most Western countries, with particularly high rates in recent years, up to +10% in 2017, in a market that exceeded one billion euros in the same year (ISTAT, ISMEA). Therefore, there is an opportunity for Puglia's farmers linked to a growing market and a specific crop, peanuts, which are mostly imported from the USA, Argentina, Israel, China, and India, in a market context that tends to value national supply chains and increasingly disfavors products from areas considered "unsafe" in terms of food safety.
Advantages and opportunities
The context analysis also shows how peanuts, like all legumes, can offer significant agricultural advantages in the Puglia region as an alternative crop in rotation with wheat and tomatoes, with positive effects on nitrogen and organic matter enrichment in the soil and on the productive yields of the rotated crops. Based on the insights gathered by the members of the project's Operational Group, despite attempts being made and ongoing efforts in Puglia, the development of a local peanut supply chain is significantly behind. There is a lack of adequate knowledge of cultivation techniques and varieties suitable for our territories, and it is necessary to select varieties, experiment, and develop specialized agricultural machinery. Additionally, testing the use of biofertilizers and determining optimal conditions for the stabilization and storage of fruits to prevent post-harvest spoilage is essential. Resolving these gaps would put Puglia's cereal farmers in a position to seize an interesting market opportunity, diversifying productions with positive effects on business profitability. The project partners form an Operational Group of the PEI AGRI, a cooperation model based on the "interactive innovation model" that involves collaboration among various actors to make the best use of different complementary types of knowledge. The main objective is co-creating and disseminating solutions/opportunities ready to be implemented in practice. The PEANUT GO is composed of significant stakeholders such as: AZIENDE AGRICOLE RIUNITE PEDONE, DARE PUGLIA, UNIVERSITA’ DEGLI STUDI DI FOGGIA, CIA PUGLIA, CONAPO, I.F.OR. SRL, and consulting companies that have been promoting and evaluating innovations in the agri-food sector for years, such as ARETE’ and CASSANDRO.
