23-26 June 2015
AGFORWARD 2nd General Assembly
The AGFORWARD consortium held a productive Second General Assembly at the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Chania in Crete between 24 and 26 June 2015. The host was Professor Anastasia Pantera from TEI Stereas Elladas. In total 47 researchers attended the meeting, including 13 people for the first time. The first two days of the Assembly mainly comprised workshops focused on advancing the various milestones and deliverables within the project. An addition pre-Assembly workshop focused on agroforestry at a landscape scale was also held on 23 June.
AGFORWARD has an External Expert Advisory Panel to provide guidance on our research. Hence the Consortium was pleased that Professor Shibu Jose from the University of Missouri and Professors PK Nair and Vimala Nair from the University of Florida were able to attend and contribute to the workshops. Both PK Nair and Shibu Jose also gave interesting and stimulating presentations on advances in agroforestry from global and North American perspectives.
On Friday 26 June, the General Assembly included a field trip, led by Professor Vasilios Papanastasis, to see demonstrations of the implementation of agroforestry in Crete. This included the intercropping of orange trees, which is the focus of one of the stakeholder groups. The group also visited woodland grazing systems in the more mountainous parts of the country. The next General Assembly is scheduled for 23 to 24 May 2016 in Montpellier, France, to tie in with the third European Agroforestry Conference which is scheduled for 25 to 27 May 2016.
Nair, PK (2015). Global Trends in Agroforestry: A Quick Overview. Presentation made to the 2nd General Assembly of the AGFORWARD project on 25 June 2015. Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Chania, Crete, Greece.
Jose, S. (2015). Temperate Agroforestry in the 21st Century: A North American Perspective. Presentation made to the 2nd General Assembly of the AGFORWARD project on 25 June 2015. Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Chania, Crete, Greece.