12 July 2017 → 30 April 2022
European funding: various
-
-
Geology
-
Aquatic sciences, challenges and pollution
This project aims to reduce water and fertilizer use in horticulture by using biostimulants and innovative tools. This combination will result in up to 20% reduction of water and 10% of fertilizers, depending on the crop. By including BS based on seaweeds, economic opportunities for seaweed producers will be created. Innovative sensors allow growers to monitor plant responses to reduced water supply and to adjust irrigation accordingly. Analytic tools allow users to determine water and nutrient use efficiency. This project will result in pilot data on biostimulants, generate innovative tools and demonstrate them to support growers, producers of biostimulants and suppliers of substrates & fertilizers. The multi-stakeholder appproach permits a successful realization of project objectives since expertise of all partners is complementary, ensuring a broad dissemination. A policy protocol will be presented to policy makers to help implement the new European legislation on biostimulants.
The innovative plant sensors used in the framework of the project have been developed at the Ghent University in the laboratory of Plant Ecology, led by Professor Kathy Steppe. Kathy Steppe and her team will install the different plant sensors in the 4 countries to demonstrate how plants can be monitored in situ and online. The project will make use of stable isotopes (Pascal Boeckx, Isotope Bioscience Laboratory) to measure the increased water and fertilizer use efficiency of the plants after treatment with biostimulants. Pascal Boeckx and his team will carry out the isotope analysis and will calculate how the water and fertilizer use efficiency are increased due to application of biostimulants. Professor Marie-Christine Van Labeke’s expertise and the infrastructure of her laboratory (In Vitro Biology and Horticulture) will be used to measure abiotic stress in plants. Maaike Perneel, Business Developer of CropFit will develop a protocol for policy makers to measure the impact of biostimulants on water and fertilizer use efficiency. This protocol may be integrated into the new European legislative framework for biostimulants.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Regional Development Fund, ERDF. Neither the European Union nor the authority can be held responsible for any use the may be made of the information contained therein.
