ROME - Potato and rocket scraps to defeat cereal diseases.
This is the aim of the Susincer project which plans to use agro-industrial resources efficiently to enhance waste and avoid waste, creating by-products with high added value that combine environmental and economic sustainability.
The three-year project aims to create blends to be used as a resource in the defense of the two most widespread crops in the world, corn and wheat;
all based on processing waste (potato skins, root residues and stems for rocket) with high added value useful for the defense of the crop against fungi and pathogens.
In fact, corn and wheat are easily subjected to these attacks which produce harmful toxins for human and animal health.
Therefore, reducing the exposure to fungi and pathogens, explains Crea, also reduces mycotoxins, thus obtaining healthier cereals.
The new formulations with high antifungal power will be reintroduced in the cereal production chain for the defense against fungal pathogens and phytophagous insects, thus reconciling a reduced environmental impact with the adoption of a more sustainable phytosanitary defense.
An additional opportunity for farmers who currently do not have valid biofungicides with low environmental impact, for consumers, who are increasingly attentive to the sustainability of the product purchased and for companies that produce fertilizers, interested in developing new products capable of increasing the economic and environmental value of its industrial waste.
