Program 2019
The 13th Dahlia Greidinger International Symposium:
Sustainable Primary Food Production Emphasizing Soil-Water and Environmental Conservation
Monday, March 4th
Tuesday, March 5th
Time Description
Speaker
8:15-9:00
Registration
Opening session: Introduction and greetings
9:00-9:20
Symposium Chair
Alex Furman
Executive Vice President for Research, Technion Wayne Kaplan
Civil and Environmental Engineering, Technion
Greidinger Family RepresentativeEran Friedler
9:20-9:50
Soil Health: Linking Comprehensive Soil Assessment with Agronomic Management Decisions Harold Mathijs Van Es
9:50-10:20
Understanding and mitigating environmental footprints of food production systems in tropical and subtropical regions Klaus Butterbach-Bahl
10:20-10:40
Coffee break
Session I: Precision agriculture, advanced monitoring and modeling (part 1)
Chaired by Nurit Agam
10:40-11:10 Approaches for large scale application of variable rate water management Victor Alchanatis
11:10-11:30 Integration of earth observation technologies into an advisory system for the collective management of crops María P. González-Dugo
11:30-11:50
Precision Irrigation – Research & Development directions Ofer Beeri
11:50-12:10
Advanced Soil Sampling Strategy for Precision Agriculture Iggy Litaor
12:10-12:30 The potential of the spectral ‘water balance index’ (WABI) for crop irrigation scheduling Uri Hochberg
12:30-13:20 Lunch break (GWRI building)
Session II: Precision agriculture, advanced monitoring and modeling (part 2)
Chaired by Victor Alchanatis
13:20-13:50
Geophysical characterization and monitoring to support agriculture Johan A. (Sander) Huisman
13:50-14:10 Below canopy radiation divergence in a vineyard – implications on inter-row surface energy balance Nurit Agam
14:10-14:30 Biogeochemical modeling for sustainability performance standards: Adapt-N and N balance in US corn production Shai Sela
14:30-14:50 Using simple RGB Camera to estimate Nitrogen Uptake, Nitrogen Nutrition Index (NNI) and critical Nitrogen: spring wheat case study Jiftah Ben-Asher
14:50-15:10 Biological and Optical Challenges to Remote Sensing: Implications and Opportunities for Plant Stress Detection Anatoly Gitelson
15:10-15:30
Coffee break
Session III: Soil health Chaired by Guy Levy
15:30-15:50 Development of multi-factorial soil health index for the Mediterranean agricultural systems Gil Eshel
15:50-16:10 Biochar on Extracellular enzymes, Microbes and Organic Matter Dynamics in Sediments Ji-Dong Gu
16:10-16:30 Soil free-living nematodes community as Bioindicators of Soil Health Yosef Steinberger
16:30-16:50 Coffee break
Panel discussion: Challenges in sensing, monitoring and precision agriculture
16:50-17:20 Panel members: Victor Alchanatis (conveyor) Nurit Agam, María González-Dugo and Sander Huisman
Wednesday, March 6th
Time Description
Speaker
Session IV: Environmental and economical sustainability Chaired by Klaus Butterbach-Bahl
8:30-9:00 Can farming be precise and sustainable? And how can we be sure? Veerle Van linden
9:00-9:20 Agriculture and Pollutants in the Hula Valley Moshe Gophen
9:20-9:40 Best Management Strategies for Sustainable Rice Production with Minimum Water Requirement Kalita Prasanta
9:40-10:00 Carbon debt of field-scale Conservation Reserve Program grasslands converted to annual and perennial bioenergy crops Ilya Gelfand
10:00-10:20 Economy-Wide Long-Run Water Management under Salinity: Lessons from the Case of Israel Iddo Kan
10:20-10:40 Coffee break
Session V: Advanced Technology and Climatic monitoring for Environmental sustainability
Chaired by Gil Eshel
10:40-11:00 Hydrothermal treatment of agricultural and food waste: a circular economy approach to improve energy recovery, nutrients and bioactive compounds Roy Posmanik
11:00-11:20 A general framework for optimal crop selection and water allocation using dynamic crop models Raphael Linker
11:20-11:40 Gallic Acid Interactions with Iron Coated Smectites
Adi Radian
11:40-12:00 Nature-sourced desalinization using halophyte-zeolite wetlands
Ezra Orlofsky
12:00-12:20 Microclimate, evapotranspiration and water use efficiency of pepper in high-tunnel greenhouses and screenhouses in semi-arid regions
Josef Tanny
12:20-12:40 Exploiting dynamic changes in internal screenhouse climate to inform irrigation in bananas Shabtai Cohen
12:40-13:30 Lunch break (GWRI building)
Session VI: Soil and plant biology Chaired by Asher Bar-Tal
13:30-14:00 The rhizosphere microbiome - Key for plant Health and Growth
Kornelia Smalla
14:00-14:20 Agricultural practices from the microbiome's point of view
Dror Minz
14:20-14:50
Screening for biostimulants effect on yield and drought tolerance using an innovative high-throughput physiological functional-phenotyping system Menachem Moshelion
14:50-15:10 Spatial dynamics of carbohydrate content in trees in tree across diurnal and seasonal time scales Aude Tixier
15:10-15:30 Modeling spring phenology of deciduous trees by temperature mediated kinetics of carbohydrate metabolism
Or Sperling
15:30-15:40 Coffee break
Panel discussion: Agricultural sustainability and soil health
15:40-16:20 Panel members: Klaus Butterbach-Bahl (conveyor), Gil Eshel, Veerle Van linden and Harold Van Es
16:20-17:50 Poster session (including finger food, soft and alcoholic beverages)
17:50-18:00 Poster awards