€ 1.5 million for UT research to mitigate drought damage

03 / 03 / 2022 | Redactie

NWO has awarded a KIC grant of 1.5 million euros to the WUNDER project led by the University of Twente. The research aims to understand the behaviour of soil and vegetation during prolonged droughts, and to develop solutions that mitigate drought damage to crops.

The objective of the WUNDER project (Water Use and Drought Ecohydrological Responses of Agricultural and Nature Ecosystems in the Netherlands) is to minimize damages caused by extreme droughts in the Netherlands. The research partners want to develop an integrated modelling system, which could be used to explore strategies for managing, planning and adapting agriculture and nature systems to extreme droughts.

WUNDER is a consortium of 17 (public and private) partners and stakeholders, all led by the University of Twente with professor Bob Su as the project leader. The project will actively engage with farmers, water managers and other decision makers. Among the partners are, for example, Deltares, Wageningen Environmental Research, Rijkswaterstaat and Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI).

The project has received a KIC grant of 1.5 million euros from NWO. The KIC programme (Knowledge and Innovation Covenant) stands for groundbreaking innovative solutions with societal and economic impact. Three other projects have been awarded the funding within the KIC-call ‘Climate-robust production systems and water management’.

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