The Catalan Institute of Cork Foundation start the demonstration project "Diffusion of new cork management techniques to improve its productivity and resilience" to give continuity to the knowledge generated with the project Life+ Suber of integrative management for an improvement in the adaptation of cork to climate change, coordinated by Forestry Consortium of Catalonia and co-financed, among others, by the Institute itself.

The aim of this demonstration project is to transfer this knowledge into new forest management strategies that are effective for cork oaks through the comparison of permanent plots of different productive stands, either for fire prevention or restoration of degraded areas.

The project will be carried out over the next two years and is financed by the Department of Climate Action of the Generalitat of Catalonia and of European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD).

The context

Climate change poses a serious threat to cork conservation, sustainable cork production and the value chain linked to this product, which may translate into reduced cork vitality and productivity due to water stress , an increase in pests or a greater frequency of forest fires. It is in this context that the incorporation of the integral management of new techniques and methods to improve the adaptation capacities of the corks becomes essential.

The demonstration project is currently in the first phase of selecting the stands that will be monitored based on the work initiated by the Life+Suber project and the development of the data collection protocol. The second phase will consist of the processing of the data obtained and the diagnosis of the stands, and the third and last phase will be the dissemination of the results obtained through the new innovative forestry techniques.