Mud Valley Foundation and our partner Quinta Vale da Lama kicked off our participation in the MORFeuS program on April 10, 2026, with the installation of soil moisture monitoring probes at the farm.
MORFeuS is a collaborative initiative funded by the EU PRIMA program, dedicated to strengthening the resilience of Mediterranean territories against climate change through better integrated management of agro-ecosystems, water, food, and energy. The placement of soil moisture monitoring probes at Quinta Vale da Lama will support knowledge and planning related to optimizing irrigation in the farm’s market garden area. Demonstration sites for the program are located in Portugal (central and western Algarve), southern France, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. The program will allow the sharing of results between different sites and disseminate them to other territories.
About the Soil Moisture Monitoring Probes and What We Can Learn
The Hydrascout soil probes, created and installed by HSTI, measure soil moisture and temperature every 30 minutes, and send data to the system every 3 hours. Each probe has 4 sensors, set at depths of 20cm, 40cm, 60cm, and 1m, so that we can understand variances at different soil depths over time.
3 probes were placed:
- The West Garden near a perennial-focused hügelkultur bed with soil interventions,
- The West Garden in an alley-cropped annual bed with soil interventions, and
- The East Garden, a control location with limited soil interventions and no trees.
We selected these zones because they are three distinct zones with different soil and ecological considerations, so that we can understand the effects of these factors as well. The probes will operate and collect data for three years, giving us plenty of time to examine changes over time and develop optimized water-usage plans. The teams at Mud Valley Foundation and Quinta Vale da Lama have access to robust reporting and analytics data from the probes through an online interface, with the Soil Lab at Mud Valley Foundation taking the lead in analyzing the data.
These sensors will allow us to answer different questions:
- How much, how long, and at what depth, is water available for different plants/crops? This knowledge will support irrigation optimization for more sustainable and water-wise agricultural purposes in our semi-arid region of Portugal.
- How much moisture are Hügelkultur beds able to retain? The sensors will allow us to measure the effect of the carbon mass added through Hügelkultur beds for moisture retention that will impact the soil health and fertility as well as crop production.
We were joined by Oriana Brás and Sofia Bento, the project leads for the Department of Social Sciences at the Institute of Economics and Management (ISEG) at the University of Lisboa, as well as members of the soil mositure monitoring probe installation team and the Quinta Vale da Lama farm operations team.
👉 Learn more about the MORFeuS program.
