INTERREG-SUDOE An-gel-sudoe Project: Combating and warning against spring frost irrigation in agriculture and arboriculture

Although the process of climate change and global warming is intuitively associated with droughts, heat waves, or forest fires, it also has very negative effects on agriculture by altering the natural development cycle of plant species. Thus, progressively milder winters favor the early flowering of crops, increasing the plants' vulnerability to spring frosts. Frosts are not, therefore, more intense than in the past, but rather they affect crops at critical stages of their development, causing catastrophic effects, with up to 100% losses in some fruit and vineyard production.

Most representative agricultural productions in the Southwest of the Netherlands lack the means to prevent and mitigate frost risk, and those that do rely on energy-intensive, costly, and unsustainable systems. In this context, the An-Gel Sudoe project brings together the most representative scientific and technical capabilities of the Southwest region to develop and test innovative solutions for frost risk prevention and adaptation, as well as an early warning system for producers. It will also emphasize the assimilation of project results by producers through a support system and their integration into public policy through a series of recommendation reports.

Finally, from an interdisciplinary perspective, a socioeconomic evaluation of the developed solutions will be carried out in comparison to pre-existing alternatives. The expected results of An-Gel Sudoe provide a tangible and assimilable transnational knowledge base for adapting to frost risk, increasing the resilience of representative crops in the Sudoe region through sustainable, low-cost solutions that can be transferred to other Sudoe territories or the EU.