PIF2024 - Carbon balance of intercropped woody and herbaceous cash species in Mediterranean agroecosystems (PID2023-153293OA-I00)

The PhD student will be enrolled within the CIDE research team. The training plan will include (i) specific courses to improve his/her skills in the ambit of soil management, agriculture and statistics (ii) several research stages in national and international universities/research centers. The PhD thesis will be conducted in the framework of the INTERMED project, by evaluating the carbon balance of the proposed intercropping practices. The beneficiary of the pre-doctoral contract will extend the current experimental design in this regard by proposing further determinations to evaluate how agronomic diversification (i.e. including legumes and herbaceous mowing) affects carbon sequestration (uptake) and carbon emissions (release) within the agroecosystem. This could be done through the evaluation of plant and soil respiration both in the row and in the alley, but also whole-plant net CO2 exchange rate (NCER) during day and night using gas exchange chambers (Buesa et al., 2020). Carbon sequestration by the crops could be further evaluated through validating carbon balance models such as Mirás-Avalos et al. (2018) with plant growth above- and below-ground data; and by the soil carbon content tracking both in the row and in the alley and applying the methodology suggested by FAO for C soil sequestration. The scientific papers derived from his/her doctoral thesis will be published before its defense, which will be done as a compendium of publications.