MED-UÉvora researcher honored as one of the international references in education for Conservation Agriculture

Gottlieb Basch, MED researcher and full professor at the Department of Plant Science of the University of Évora, was one of the five international awardees of the “No-Till Legends” initiative. This initiative promoted by “No-Till Farmer”, an American agricultural magazine dedicated to no-till farming/Conservation Agriculture for 60 years, began to recognise, in 2017, dozens of international figures linked to Conservation Agriculture and pioneers in the application of no-till techniques. Since then they have been asked about continuing this recognition initiative and launched it again earlier this year, and it is intended to continue.

Earlier this year, a number of international stakeholders in the field of conservation agriculture put together a list of 52 people who have contributed significantly to the development, promotion and international dissemination of the many benefits of conservation agriculture and direct seeding. This year’s five honorees were selected from this list by a panel of judges. Gottlieb Basch was recognised in the newly created category “International No-Till Educators.” (https://www.no-tillfarmer.com/articles/11134-no-tills-list-of-legends)

Gottlieb Basch’s biography 

Gottlieb Basch holds a doctorate in Agricultural Sciences from the Georg-August University of Göttingen, Germany. In 1984, his thesis compared the use of no-till and diversified crop rotations with conventional cropping systems used in southern Portugal. Based on the promising results, Gottlieb Basch has spent four decades researching the contribution of applying the principles of Conservation Agriculture to environmental, agronomic and economic health, soil health, biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

Since 1991, Gottlieb Basch has been part of MED (older ICAAM, until 2019) working on soil conservation and soil carbon dynamics. Between 2020 and early 2023 he was coordinator of the MED Research Group “Soil, Water and Climate” and from 2020 to the present, coordinator of the MED Thematic Line “Irrigated Agriculture”. He is the author or co-author of more than 40 research articles in international journals and several book chapters.

He has been a board member of APOSOLO-Portuguese Association for Soil Conservation Mobilisation since its foundation in 1999, was president of the European Federation for Conservation Agriculture from 2003 to 2008 and is again since 2011, and is a member of the International Conservation Agriculture Advisory Panel for Africa. He has also been involved in several international Conservation Agriculture projects in the European Union and Africa. He is also currently a member of the European Union Expert Group on carbon removals.