The limiting amount of fresh water resources to be dedicated to agriculture is continually shrinking, due to increasingly higher demand for household use and due to climate change related unpredictable fluctuations in rainfall, particularly in the Mediterranean basin, where viticulture contributes significantly to the economy of agriculture. Therefore, new protocols for recycling used water from industry and urban areas are essential capital for the future. However, recycled water and new materials for water recycling must meet certain quality criteria before being freely used in an ecosystem.
The project objectives cover the development of a prototype photo/electrocatalytic system which can simultaneously produce hydrogen gas and efficiently clean wastewater from organic contaminants. At present detailed toxicity studies about water suitability/quality produced using electrocatalytic and photoelectrocatalytic way is lacking. So, the aim of the project is to establish standards for water quality to be applied for irrigation of plants.
The project objectives with potential impact for the development of new directions in water savings in Slovenia and Israel are following: (1) To develop new materials and protocols for WW recycling; (2) to test the suitability of recycled water for its use in agriculture by using integrate analysis metabolomics, ion chromatography and spectroscopy (3) Application of irrigation strategies (differential rate of discharge during the plant growth) in potted vines to determine the most effective water usage protocol on plant physiology and health; (5) Establishing an optimal irrigation regime based on the daily evapotranspiration; (6) Integrating the dataset to non-destructive monitoring of plants status by spectroscopic analysis.