water

This report focuses on eight fruit crops (apricot, avocado, mango, fig, litchi, peach, nectarine, and pistachio) and two vegetable crops (artichoke and sweet potato). The requirements for each crop including climate, soil and water are listed in Appendix I. Some of these crops (i.e. apricot, peach, nectarine, and pistachio) require a specific chilling period to stimulate fruiting. Since different varieties have different chilling requirements, care must be taken to select the right variety for each area according to their chill hours.

AgroStrat foresees a well designed water sampling campaign in order to assess the quality of water used for irrigation in Aegina. Water samples are collected from many different sites every two months. The results of the 1st water sampling campaing, which took place in January 2013 indicate that the water samples have very high concentration of chloride ions, while the values of Electrical Conductivity for the most of the samples are higher than 3000μS/cm. High nitrates content was also measured for some of the samples. 

A Master of Science thesis by Ms Aikaterini Kalamara (Wageningen University, The Netherlands). It focuses on the water supply and conservation in Aegina Island-Greece and investigates its function and actors relations from an innovation system perspective. The system failure framework is used to detect and analyse the bottlenecks that hinder innovation in the local system and identify opening points that could assist in the process of social learning and augment water conservation.