  We analyze the production of $\rho$-mesons in $p + A$ reactions including
both the production by proton-nucleon as well as pion-nucleon collisions within
a coupled channel transport approach. The final state interactions of the
$\rho$-meson with nucleons are evaluated from a resonance model which allows to
extract elastic and inelastic cross sections. We include the latter final state
interactions, the $\rho$-meson decay into two pions as well as the final
pion-nucleon interactions within the transport approach. We find the invariant
mass distribution of pion pairs to be sensitive to the $\rho$-meson properties
in the nuclear medium. However, due to the strong final state interactions of
pions only light targets like $^{12}C$ might be suited to extract a
$\rho$-signal from the uncorrelated two pion background which carries
information about the in-medium properties of the $\rho$-meson.
