WATERWEB - Water Resource Strategies and Drought Alleviation in Western Balkan Agriculture: An EU INCO-WB Project

A three-year project, within the EU FP6 INCO-WB programme, with four EU and three WB partners, started in spring 2004 to develop strategies to manage water resources for three regions in Serbia and Montenegro and Macedonia from a river basin scale through the farm and crop scales to single plant water use, taking account of environmental, socio-economic and health implications of different types of land-water use. Consortium members will study river flow, evaporation regimes, rainfall patterns, runoff and water availability in relation to land management, using GIS to categorize two regions near Belgrade, Serbia and Ovce Pole, Macedonia. Water quality and nutrient use will be studied in relation to eutrophication, micro-biological hazards and ecotoxicology on the farm scale, together with trials on water and nutrient use to test deficit irrigation techniques with maize, grapevine, potato, tomato and quinoa. Results will be extended to tests on selected local farms