kick-off meeting of the AbDü project: From agricultural waste to smart fertilizer – Black Soldier Flies as a living bioreactor

Today, the members of the AbDü consortium met for the kick-off meeting of this European research and development project which aims to develop an automated, AI-controlled bioreactor for the conversion of agricultural side streams into a smart biofertilizer. In fact, the conversion will be performed by larvae of the black soldier fly which we will feed with leftovers from the processingof lettuce and potatoes, onionsand other field vegetables. Within a few days, these larvae will convert the plant materialinto a precious fertilizer. The larvae will be separated from the spent medium and grown to adult flies which produce new eggs to inoculate the next container. At the end of their lives, we will extract the chitin from the flies' cuticles and convert it into chitosan. We have recently developed a process that yields a black soldier fly chitosan that is structurally and functionally equivalent to our well-known shrimp shell chitosan with excellent plant strengthening activities. In the AbDü project, we aim to adapt this process to yield a chitosan which is optimised to increase the plants' nutrient use efficiency when added to the spent medium fertilizer obtained from the bioreactor, minimizing fertilizer loss to the environment and ground water. Our consortium convenes all the specialist partners required for this ambitious project: two commercial producers of vegetables will provide the agricultural side stream and test the smart fertilizer on their fields, an insect breeding company will design and build the bioreactor, we are the experts in bioactive chitosans, and the Network Agriculture Lower-Saxony will coordinate the project and disseminate our results. Stay tuned to learn how the progress of our work will advance the essential transition towards sustainable agriculture and a perfect circular bioeconomy.