Improved water resources management for smart farming: a case study for Cyprus.

Water-scarce areas are threatened by climate crisis and, thus, there is an urgent need for optimizing water resources management. Remote sensing has been widely used for calculating the evapotranspiration over large areas, which is an essential variable for calculating the actual irrigation needs of crops. The main objective of this work is to design an approach to optimize the irrigation needs for specific crops.

Ranking of crop plants according to their potential to uptake and accumulate contaminants of emerging concern.

The reuse of treated wastewater (TWW) for irrigation and the use of biosolids and manures as soil amendment constitute significant pathways for the introduction of the contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) to the agricultural environment. Consequently, CECs are routinely detected in TWW-irrigated agricultural soils and runoff from such sites, in biosolids- and manure-amended soils, and in surface and groundwater systems and sediments receiving TWW. Crop plants grown in such contaminated agricultural environments have been found to uptake and accumulate CECs in their tissues, constituting possible vectors of introducing CECs into the food chain; an issue that is presently considered of high priority, thus needing intensive investigation.