Agriculture: ENEA part of European Project to fight desertification

Regenerating agricultural soils at risk of desertification through an innovative bio-treatment which combines scientific research, circular economy and low production costs. This is the objective of POREM, a project of the European LIFE program worth almost 1.5 million euro, in which  Italy participates with ENEA, Gruppo Soldano srl of Limbadi (Vibo Valentia) and ASTRA Development and Innovation of Faenza (Ravenna) as coordinator.

The research team, which also includes partners from Spain and the Czech Republic, has developed a new bioactivator which employs manure - the main by-product of poultry farming - and a natural enzymatic preparation as raw materials.

“Manure is rich in nutrients and is a constant, low-cost source of organic matter and nutrients for soil regeneration. The enzymatic preparation derives from a mixture of plants, like grasses and apiaceae, and constitutes the main element because it turns manure into a bioactivator and determining its properties ", Alessandra Strafella at the ENEA Laboratory of Materials Technologies in Faenza said.

“45% of European soils is at risk of desertification - the ENEA researcher continued - and focusing on new fertilizers is not sufficient. With POREM we have devised a new technique to regenerate soil, boost productivity and biodiversity and, above all, reduce water needs by increasing soil water retention by 25-35%. Behind this result there is a preparation of enzymes which nourishes the great variety of microorganisms that populate and make the soil fertile".

Actually, the POREM biotreatment can fix carbon in soil (+ 40%), the organic substance that increases soil fertility and improves its structure by reducing erosion phenomena and preserving its ability to regulate surface and deep water flows. Moreover, it increases plant nutrients like phosphorus (+ 20%) and nitrogen (+40), which are retained in the soil and slowly released.

But there is more. The production of the bioactivator has a low environmental impact because it reduces greenhouse gas emissions and cuts the ammonia content (-80%), responsible for bad smell, compared to untreated manure. In Europe, poultry farming IS the fourth source of ammonia emissions and now, thanks to POREM, It’s possible to convert waste from the poultry industry into a new product useful for maintaining soil fertility and functionality .

So far in our country (specifically in Calabria and Puglia), approximately 3 tons of bioactıvator have been produced; in this first stage, ENEA monitored CO2, ammonia, methane and hydrogen sulphide emissions by means sensors placed inside and on the surface of the heaps, and analyzed the chemical-physical characteristics of the bioactivator to assess evolution, thermal stability and decomposition.

The first field tests were conducted by ASTRA on tomato-growing fields in Cesena and barley in the Foggia province. In both cases preliminary results were promising. In the Cesena factory, the production of industrial tomatoes obtained with POREM were quantitatively comparable to those obtained with synthetic fertilizers and much higher than those of the untreated sample; qualitatively, the tomatoes presented higher sugar content values , resulting in an improvement of the product and consequently of its commercial value.

These results were achieved applying a lower quantity of nitrogen (-69%) per hectare than that used with mineral fertilization, recommended by integrated production regulations. During 2020, on the same plots of land the trial will be repeated on cabbage crops.

In the Foggia factory the researchers observed, from the very beginning of the experimentation with POREM, a greater vigor of crops, a sort of "starter effect" which could be greater in degraded soils. In the harvesting phase, the lots where POREM was used were significantly more productive than those treated with BIOAZOTO N12 (an organic fertilizer) and those not treated.

The project is currently in a stage of quantitative and qualitative analysis of tomato and barley crops treated with the POREM bioactivator. “Once the field trials will be completed, the next step is to verify the quality improvement of the soils.  Soon this will be possible thanks to computerized sensors, already in use in precision agriculture, which can detect soil deficiencies and therefore tell us when and how to use the POREM bioactivator ",  Strafella concluded.