An‑Gel pilot trial – Soil and ground cover management to mitigate frost in cherry orchards – ACMG

Climate change is altering crop development cycles, leading to milder winters that advance flowering. This increases plant vulnerability to spring frosts, which affect crops at critical stages and can cause very significant losses in fruit production.

In the SUDOE area, many farms lack effective solutions to address this risk. Available techniques are often costly, energy-intensive, or dependent on water use. In this context, the Interreg An‑Gel SUDOE project promotes the development and testing of innovative, sustainable, and transferable solutions to improve the resilience of the agricultural sector to frost events.

Pilot trial

The pilot trial is carried out in a cherry orchard under real production conditions, allowing the practical applicability of the tested solutions to be assessed. The farm includes several plots with similar characteristics and commercial varieties adapted to fruit production.

The objective of the pilot is to analyze the influence of soil moisture and ground cover management on the intensity of spring frosts. To achieve this, an experimental setup has been designed based on the comparison of different soil and vegetation management practices.

Specifically, two main approaches are compared:

• Soil irrigated prior to the frost event, maintained close to field capacity, combined with the presence of plant residues or non-mowed ground cover.
• Soil without prior irrigation, with ground cover managed through mowing and vegetation control between rows.

This design makes it possible to assess how soil moisture conditions and vegetation cover influence the thermal behavior of the orchard and the severity of frost events.

The trial also includes a monitoring system with weather stations and soil sensors that record climatic and soil variables, enabling analysis of the relationship between orchard microclimate and frost damage.

Actions and impact

The actions carried out in the pilot focus on testing agronomic practices related to soil management as passive frost protection solutions, reducing the need to rely on resource-intensive techniques. Continuous monitoring of environmental and soil conditions is also carried out, along with the analysis of the collected data.

The expected impact is the identification of effective, sustainable, and low-cost management strategies to reduce damage caused by spring frosts in cherry orchards. These solutions can be transferred to other farms and territories, contributing to improving the resilience of the agricultural sector to climate change and supporting decision-making at both technical and policy levels.