APPLICATION OF INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGIES IN AGRICULTURE AS A PART OF THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF SERBIAN RURAL AREAS

Abstract

Sustainable rural development is vital to the economic and environmental viability of the Serbia. Serbian rural population relies on agriculture for their livelihoods. Making agriculture in rural areas sustainable and competitive is not an easy to achieve. Authors highlighted the new challenge for this goal. The European Commission withdraws chemicals for preventing sprouting of potato (Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/989). Faced with this demand, potato producers have to find a way how to stay competitive on a current market, and do not additionally harm already fragile environmental state. Authors in this article propose the use of essential oils for prevention the potato sprouting. Exploring different kind of essential oils to solve this problem, researchers obtained useful results. There is a new option to encourage use of essential oils in potato production. So, producers will avoid new significant production costs, stay in the competitive race to the production line, and enhance sustainable development of rural areas.