ARTAL Smart Agriculture participated on December 2 in a Conference on Sustainable Agriculture organized by the Castellón Provincial Council to present the results of the Intomed project whose objective is to identify, develop, validate and promote effective and sustainable Integrated Pest Management tools. Doctor Alessandro Rienzo, from ARTAL’s Technical Department, spoke about priming applied to agriculture, the revolutionary innovation developed by the biotechnological company.
Rienzo, a plant biotechnologist from the University of Padua and a doctorate in Biotechnology from the Polytechnic University of Valencia and Harvard University (United States), explained the ‘priming effect’, which stimulates the immune system of plants, conditioning them to respond in a more quickly and efficiently to different stress factors. This technology is the basis for the operation of PRIMTAL, a range of immunological activators launched by ARTAL Smart Agriculture in 2018.
The Castellón Provincial Council has reinforced its commitment to agricultural research with this conference organized by the provincial corporation and the Universitat Jaume I. The conference analyzed the sustainable tools for pest control that have emerged under the protection of this project in which Universities and research centers from six Mediterranean countries have collaborated.
In addition to Alessandro Rienzo, prominent researchers participated, such as Víctor Flors and Paloma Sánchez (Universitat Jaume I), José Miguel Campos (IRTA), Alberto Urbaneja (IVIA), Pablo Ibort (Koppert), Miguel Romano (LEV2050) and Pedro Águila (Bioera ).
The Castellón Provincial Council has contributed around 300,000 euros to the Intomed project in the last three years to support research into the application of mycorrhizae in different types of crops, such as citrus, almond, olive and tomato, and promote their resistance to attack pests and against water stress. The Deputy for Rural Development, Santi Pérez, spoke at the conference to show the support of the provincial institution for the field of sustainable agriculture and ecological pest control.