Innomission 3 project: Climate friendly plant biologicals
The project “Climate and Environmentally Friendly Plant Biologicals – Development of novel methods for assessing the impact of plant biologicals on crop productivity, climate, environment, and biodiversity” has been funded by the Danish Innovation Foundation.
The project is a part of the AgriFoodTure partnership, which is the outcome of a joint roadmap, written and submitted by around 300 researchers and experts from all Danish universities and several development organizations in the Danish food cluster in connection with Innovation Fund Denmark’s Innomission 3 call in April 2021.
Project goal:
The project aims to develop novel methods for assessing beneficial effects of plant biologicals.
The use of chemical pesticides and fertilisers must be reduced. However, with no alternatives available, there is a great risk of indirect climate impact due to yield loss caused by pests and disease. Plant biologicals can work as a partial substitute but are much more sensitive to local environments than agrochemicals. To give farmers a true alternative, new tools are required for testing the efficacy and robustness of plant biologicals, their effect on biodiversity and climate footprints.
Plan:
The project will run for four years.
Experimental designs and protocols will be developed for using plant biologicals to meet a range of needs and challenges. Procedures will also be established for calculating the impact of plant biologicals on climate, biodiversity and the environment.
Using these designs and protocols, field trials will be conducted over three years to test the impact of plant biologicals on specific pests or their effect as biostimulants
In addition, the project will develop data models for analysing the effects of treatment under varying environmental conditions.
Expected results:
The methodologies developed through the project will be essential to the future development and implementation of plant biologicals. Within Danish agriculture, they have an emission mitigation potential of 12,500 tons of CO2.
A calculation tool will be developed to provide farmers, companies and institutions with information about the climate effects of plant biologicals. This and other project results will be communicated through publications, symposiums and workshops.