An insight into the Portuguese sector of aromatic and medicinal plants
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abstract
In recent years in Portugal, many new farmers began to settle in the medicinal and
aromatic plants (MAP) sector. They are mostly young, highly educated, though not
always in agronomy. Almost all adopted organic farming practices and put soil screen
for protection against weeds. In this work, we provide a diagnosis of the situation of
the new producers and give up a guideline to mitigate the situation that has arisen.
Shortly after installation, virtually all producers are experiencing great difficulties,
because they cannot fertilize their plants and the biomass they produce is very low.
The application of solid fertilizer and organic amendments is not possible due to soil
screen. They have appeared on the market liquid organic fertilizer which can be used
in fertigation, but their costs are prohibitive. Studies for three years with verbena,
lemon balm and peppermint have shown that these fertilization solutions give tenuous
productivity increases, revealing the plants deep symptoms of nitrogen deficiency very
quickly. In the future seems to be no alternative to the removal of the screen and to
the introduction into the system of a livestock component or legumes with ability to fix
atmospheric nitrogen. Some legumes can be grown during the winter in an
asynchronous cycle with the main MAP grown in Portugal. However, these cropping
technologies have not yet been tested in Portugal, which can leave the producers
vulnerable to error.
