Advancing crop resilience and soil health through agroecological practices

The transition toward sustainable agriculture demands innovative approaches that can simultaneously improve crop productivity, protect natural resources, and reinforce long-term ecosystem resilience. Agroecological practices (AE), including crop diversification, conservation tillage, and integrated pest management, have emerged as essential pillars in building farming systems that balance production goals with environmental stewardship. Within this context, biofertilizers and cover crops represent two particularly promising strategies. Biofertilizers enhance nutrient availability, plant growth, and yields while reducing dependence on synthetic inputs, whereas cover crops contribute to soil fertility, water retention, and biodiversity, ultimately improving the overall sustainability of agricultural landscapes. Ongoing research and field applications across several EU-funded initiatives are advancing these strategies in diverse cropping systems, including vineyards, maize, and tomato. Projects such as ReCROP, which investigated biotechnological tools and sustainable practices to boost crop resilience and soil biodiversity in Mediterranean systems, and Sun2Fork, which examines solar-driven technologies and microbial inoculants to enhance tomato salinity tolerance in soilless cultivation, highlight the breadth of innovation underway. More recently, the VinAE project is establishing pilot vineyards across five major wine-producing countries to evaluate how AE influence grapevine performance, must quality, water use efficiency, and below- and above-ground biodiversity. In Portugal, field experiments at Quinta dos Aciprestes (Real Companhia Velha) are assessing the combined effects of hydrogels, cover crops, and microbial inoculants on grapevine performance.