HORIZON-CL6-2027-02-CLIMATE-03:Agroecological Practices for Carbon Farming in Mediterranean Agriculture

Our research group at Çukurova University, Türkiye, offers extensive experience in sustainable crop production and agroecological management under semi-arid Mediterranean conditions. Our expertise includes perennial forage and bioenergy crops, legume–cereal and legume–grass intercropping, crop rotations, cover crops, green manuring and organic fertilisation using compost and biogas digestate.

We can contribute experimental sites and agronomic evidence to support the development and field validation of carbon farming monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) approaches. Our research capacity provides opportunities to examine how crop choice, biomass allocation and management practices influence organic matter inputs, productivity and resource use under contrasting water and nutrient conditions. We are particularly interested in generating harmonised field data that help evaluate carbon farming practices while accounting for local soil, climate and farming-system characteristics.

We are particularly interested in contributing to:

• Field testing of diversified cropping systems, perennial crops and organic amendments relevant to soil carbon management

• Harmonised collection of crop yield, biomass quality, residue input, fertiliser, irrigation and management data to support carbon accounting

• Implementation and practical evaluation of soil sampling protocols in collaboration with soil science and MRV partners

• Provision of ground-based reference data for testing carbon models and digital MRV tools under Mediterranean conditions

• Assessment of agronomic benefits and trade-offs, including crop productivity, nutrient recycling, water use efficiency and soil health

We are open to collaborating with researchers, farmers, advisers, technology developers and certification bodies. We can support the practical evaluation of data requirements, sampling workloads and management constraints, contributing evidence to make carbon farming MRV more reliable, affordable and accessible to land managers. Our contribution would connect field-level agronomy with the scientific and operational needs of carbon farming certification and scale-up.