One of our main goals at HRAC is to expand our research with Vetiver Systems to find innovative ways to increase groundwater recharge, mitigate pollution, and control erosion.
This month we are making good use of having extra hands with our interns form the Tech de Valles to do just that. We are expanding our research with TX State University to include monitoring shorter rows of vetiver in various soli types, as well as river bank stabilization.
Working with our partners in Texas, Tamaulipas, Veracruz, and in the Xilitla region of La Huasteca Potosina, we look forward to making these systems the standard tool for large scale land and watershed restoration.
We will be monitoring these experimental plantings for vegetative plant growth, organic material deposition, moisture levels, pH, nitrate/ nitrite levels, and infiltration rates over time.
This research will help us make the larger regional and national case for Vetiver Systems as one of the fastest establishing nature-based solutions to the many on and off farm challenges that industrialized agriculture presents.
This work is being conducted as an international collaborative research project under the USDA Foreign Agriculture Service Scientific Cooperation Grant that was awarded to TX State University and Terra Advocati for research being conducted at the Huasteca Regenerative Agriculture Center in 2022.