Human practices
Scientific
The cultivation of vegetables and grains is a crucial component in sustaining the world's food supply. Fertilizing these plants plays a vital role in achieving optimal yields 1. However, this process is not particularly environmentally friendly and can be economically expensive. Conventional fertilization methods often involve the use of non-biological, expensive fertilizers that are distributed in large quantities across fields. The plants cannot absorb as many nutrients as are present in the fertilizer, resulting in most of it being washed away and ultimately ending up in wastewater 2. This not only represents a significant economic loss but also harms the environment. For example, the excessive nutrients in wastewater can lead to overgrowth of water flora, which in turn causes oxygen depletion and fish deaths in bodies of water 3.
Therefore, our goal is to produce a fertilizing agent that meets all the advantages of conventional fertilizers while being environmentally friendly and economically more profitable. It was particularly important for us to offer agriculture a way to employ eco-friendly and effective methods. A fertilizer that is biological and stores and releases the necessary nutrients according to the plant's needs could be the key to making agriculture more environmentally friendly once again.
August 17th 2023: Digital Demo Day 2023
Digital Demo Day is a trade fair that focuses on business approaches pioneering digital solutions. Nevertheless, we found it to be a fruitful venture to gain new insights on the stakeholders perspective of our project. We talked to numerous agriculturally-oriented small businesses and discussed our idea with them. The overall consensus affirmed our intentions by attesting our project idea as a potential to save on money and environmental cost – just as intended. We were also able to talk to Prof. Ilka Axmann from University of Düsseldorf’s Institute for Synthetic Microbiology. She shared her experiences on different synthetic biology approaches with us and helped us to grasp a more applicable concept of working with bioreactors we had not yet considered using. She additionally told us that bioreactors provide precise control over crucial environmental factors such as temperature, pH, and nutrient supply. Bioreactors create an environment where microorganisms can grow and reproduce at an accelerated rate. This results in higher productivity compared to traditional methods. Most importantly, to work as sustainable as possible, bioreactors lead the way to more sustainability by optimizing the use of resources. In total the Digital Demo Day was a great opportunity to get an overview over some general opinions from stakeholders on our vision and to confirm our methods regarding their viability in a synthetic biology project.
August 28th 2023: Dr. Günter Maas (Mittelhammshof in Essen)
The idea behind our project is to make the fertilization of important food resources more environmentally friendly and economically effective. We aim to achieve this by preventing the leaching of important nutrients such as phosphate and ensuring optimal and situation-specific nutrient supply with our fertilizer. To achieve this, our fertilizer would include a phosphate-buffering fungus that will establish symbiotic relationships with plants and can store or release nutrients as needed by the plants. To get to know about the current situation and question the concrete feasibility of our project, it was important to us to incorporate the perspective of people who deal with this issue on a daily basis and could potentially make use of our product. We reached out to Dr. Günter Maas, the owner of the organic farm Mittelhammshof in Essen. He kindly responded to our request and helped us to understand the criteria we need to follow for our project to be applicable in the real world. Dr. Maas shared from his experience as an organic farmer that he personally uses only natural manure, not "artificial" fertilizer (like NPK fertilizer), to fertilize his vegetables. In advance, it can be said that he not only helped us to design our experiments accordingly, but also confirmed the need for reliable nutrient fertilizing systems like ours. However, he acknowledged the leaching of important nutrients and found our project very interesting for that reason. Therefore, he would be intrigued by the theoretical precision and efficiency of our system, if the statistical analysis showed honest positive results. He pointed out that we would need to consider how we intend to introduce our fungus into the field for practical implementation. He also emphasized the importance of testing our fertilizer beforehand and ensuring it performs as expected through extensive statistical sampling. He explained that there are often random yields that people might rely on without sufficient statistical testing only to ultimately not achieve the desired results. We are aware that, from the perspective of law, that our project is still far away from being ready for practical field testing. Nevertheless he added that he would personally consider using our fertilizer, if there were enough statistical evidence and if it were legally cleared for use. He also highlighted the economic aspect, stating that the reduced nutrient leaching due to our fertilizer's effectiveness would lead to a lower need for purchasing fertilizer, which is an important criterion for many farmers.
The conversation with Dr. Günter Maas helped us to understand the criteria our project should fulfill to be reliably applicable in real-world scenarios. Through our conversation with Dr. Maas, we have become aware of how important it is for consumers to have as many statistical proofs as possible regarding the effectiveness of a fertilizer, as these are the main criteria they must rely on when purchasing a product. We understand that this criterion can be the deciding factor in whether they make a purchase or not. Accordingly, we have tried to integrate this feedback into our experiments by collecting a wide range of statistical data on the growth of our plants with and without our fertilizer. Instead of merely determining the different sizes of the plants, we have now also measured values for biomass and the number of leaves, so that in the end, we have solid data rather than just vague assumptions. Additionally, after the valuable discussion with Dr. Günter Maas, we were even more careful and made sure to select scientific sources for the design of our experiments that were often quoted and used, in order to reduce our own error rate in the laboratory. Thanks to his opinion, we have again specifically considered the topic of implementation to test our modified fungus in advance in a closed greenhouse system with an artificially created 'real' environment and not wanting to bring the system immediately from an unrealistic surrounding to the large field. Of course these greenhouse tests would need to be performed in accordance with EU and local laws regarding the testing of GMOs. We have also become more aware that there is always a certain risk that it could work in the laboratory or even in smaller gardens as a test run, but in the end unpredictable environmental conditions and other influences can never be fully assessed and controlled in their entirety: This could also lead to a certain change in the error rate (See Implementation: Other Challenges).
In total we have tried to reach several farmers and felt that it was quite difficult to establish and maintain long-term contact with farmers and farmers' associations. The reason for this was mostly the lack of time. Accordingly, our assumption is also that the lack of time makes it all the more challenging for farmers to even be able to engage with new and meaningful research in the remaining minimal free time. Likewise, genetic engineering is still highly controversial and often seen more as a danger than a support. The more grateful we are to Dr. Günter Maas for his time and interest.
August 10th 2023: 22nd Annual Conference of the German Council for Sustainable Development
As part of the "Nachhaltigkeitspreis" we received in the "Ideenwettbewerb" two of our team members had the privilege to attend the "Jahreskonferenz des Rates für Nachhaltigkeit", an annual conference organized by the German Council for Sustainable Development. This Council in Germany focuses primarily on sustainable development and maintains a close working relationship with the German government. The conference was held in Berlin on October 10th and provided a platform for insightful discussions on the merits and drawbacks of both commercial and social development. The central theme revolved around preparing industrial societies for the challenges that lie ahead in the coming centuries.
During the conference, we had the opportunity to listen to a thought-provoking address by Stefan Löfven, former Prime Minister of Sweden, who is presently collaborating with António Guterres, the UN General Secretary. Mr. Löfven's speech centered on the global frameworks established by the UN for the future. Subsequently, we engaged in a dialogue in a forum dedicated to the preservation of regional biodiversity. The conference concluded with a keynote speech by the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who spoke on the critical issues of climate change and industrial transformation. Following his address, there was an interactive session where attendees could pose questions to Chancellor Scholz in front of a larger audience.
Participating in this conference was a valuable opportunity for our team. It helped us gain a deeper understanding of how our project can align with the sustainable development goals of the Federal government, particularly in terms of reducing the ecological impact of agriculture on nature. As our Project also aims at reducing the strain of fertilizer washout our project can indeed be part of further sustainable development in Germany.
Integrated Human Practices
September 10th – 13th 2023: VAAM annual conference
In September we had the great opportunity to visit the annual conference of the VAAM, the association for general and applied microbiology, in Göttingen. We were invited to present our project in a brief scientific talk and answered questions regarding our planning. This conference provided us with the unique possibility to build upon the Know-How of dozens of esteemed biologists, as we spent our time listening to relevant talks and discussing our project and related topics with other academic researchers.
We gained valuable insights into working methods unknown to us beforehand and validated our methods by discussing them with experienced biologists. Talking about our project in front of an audience of experts presented us with the opportunity to corroborate our working methods and overthink ongoing experiments. At the same time, we learned new ways to implement our project under real-world conditions, as much of the expertise we gathered focused on agricultural solutions and problems in crop-cultures.
Discussing our ideas with experienced professionals greatly helped us to improve our working methods and develop new approaches for problems we encountered.
July 18th 2023: Professor Dr. Petra Bauer
The aim of our project is to produce a more environmentally friendly and economically effective fertilizer. For this reason, a part of our laboratory work involved planting plants to statistically assess their growth under various conditions. To avoid potential sources of error in this process, we did an interview with Professor Dr. Petra Bauer, the head of the Institute of Botany at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. We presented our project to her and focused particularly on the laboratory planning involving our plants. Since she has significant experience in cultivating plants under special conditions, she was able to provide us with advice on the use of specific soil types, as well as the methods of planting and fertilization. Additionally, her expertise helped us identify the optimal plant for our proof of concept, as outlined in the respective wiki part, which ultimately turned out to be C. pepo. She advised this organism to us as it is more receptive towards nutrient deficiencies than our originally chosen model organism Arabidopsis thaliana. As we want to examine the growth of plants in different nutrient conditions to find out how our Fungilyzer can be of better help, this was a needed quality. The conversation with Professor Dr. Bauer greatly assisted us in our laboratory work, as it provided us with insights into professional plant research. After the discussion, we had a clearer understanding of how our choice of organism could impact the results of our experiments.
October 11th 2023: Svenja Augustin
Striving for a real-world implementation of our project, an important aspect to consider is the public opinion on agricultural practices incorporating GMOs. It not only greatly influences decision making even among experts, a broad acceptance of bioengineered solutions will also be critical to their ultimate application. One interest group advocating for the responsible use of gene technology in agriculture is ÖkoProg. The public, nonpartisan association aims to host an eco-progressive network consisting of scientists, stakeholders and members of different industry branches to spread information and education on the subject and campaigns for the use of GMOs to facilitate an eco-friendly change in agriculture, retaining the objectives of working efficiently and economically. We had the opportunity to meet a member of ÖkoProg’s executive board and discuss our project idea with her.
Svenja Augustin specializes in plant sciences working at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf and is actively engaging a broad community on the aforementioned topics on a daily basis. When discussing our project, she pointed out the universal nature of Fungilyzer as one of its greatest strengths. Not only does this reduce the requisite effort in actually modifying organisms towards our goal of efficient mineral fertilization, as one modified organism could positively effectuate different kinds of crop plants, it also greatly reduces cost for the end product as well. However, she also noted that this effect could greatly depend on varying soil and weather conditions in differing agricultural sites. The desired universal effect would have to be verified and is one of the biggest aspects regarding a possible implementation. She also helped us understand the impact of public opinion on research projects like our very own and the legal decision making impacting those projects. This resonated with skepticism we experienced throughout our outreach and communication efforts, oftentimes overcome through informing skeptics on the topic and allowing them to independently evaluate the situation. While Svenja Augustin suspected less public resistance regarding GMOs used in an auxiliary role (like Fungilyzer), her experience in representing the interests of ÖkoProg still led her to highlight the critical role of public opinion on efforts in the scientific community. Additionally, she saw a great opportunity for a step towards a cyclic agricultural system in our approach. She affirmed the idea of Fungilyzer to reduce fertilizer loads, also in an economical aspect. While farmers would save money spent on fertilizer, she also drew our attention to the fact that a successful implementation would save a lot of time-consuming work and fuel as well, as farmers would not have to use their heavy equipment as often. According to Svenja Augustin, our project could also deliver a potent solution to maximize farming intensity while minimizing the ecological impact even for smaller farm businesses that can not invest into technology like drones or satellite-controlled fertilizing equipment.
The most important takeaways from this discussion were insights into the importance of economical aspects and lay opinion. These aspects cannot be ignored in our project, as we aim to deliver a satisfactory solution to all members of the agricultural value chain. Especially the educational work done by our team will therefore play a highly important role in regards to the whole scope of the project.
After Wiki Freeze
October 24th 2023: Professor Dr. Florian Wichern
After the wiki freeze, we had an additional interview with an expert for Soil Science and Plant Nutrition, Professor Dr. Florian Wichern. We were hoping to get additional insights on the feasibility of our project and what hypothetical future steps in our development we could take. During the conversation, we learned that our original assumption, that most of the phosphate would be lost due to runoff into the groundwater, was not entirely correct. However, the issue with phosphate availability remains, as Prof. Wichern explained to us that in soil, phosphate is usually quickly bound in organic forms that can’t be taken up by the plants anymore. Therefore, our new trajectory of Fungilyzer would be to take up the phosphate before it gets immobilized and store it inside the fungal vacuole in a compound that can be used by crop plants after release. Another insight was the importance of pH for the availability of phosphate. Prof. Wichern hypothesized that our modified Saccharomyces cerevisiae might actually have a helpful impact on the pH and the mobilization of phosphate compounds. This idea would have to be carefully verified in future experiments. He also pointed out the importance of tests in different soil types, as the “Einheitserde” that we used is actually a very idealized substrate and the results can not be transferred entirely to real world soils. Future testing series for Fungilyzer would have to include wide arrays of different soil types and conditions to make up an adequate amount of data to base our conclusions on.
The most important takeaway from this meeting was gaining a better insight into the multi-layered problem of phosphate deficiency, how to localize the phosphate release at the root itself and to archive this in different soil types that are not idealized systems.
- Ros, Mart B H et al. “Towards optimal use of phosphorus fertiliser.” Scientific reports vol. 10,1 17804. 20 Oct. 2020, doi:10.1038/s41598-020-74736-z↩
- M. Oliveira & A. V. Machado (2013) The role of phosphorus on eutrophication: a historical review and future perspectives, Environmental Technology Reviews, 2:1, 117-127, DOI: 10.1080/21622515.2013.861877↩
- Patricia M. Glibert, Eutrophication, harmful algae and biodiversity — Challenging paradigms in a world of complex nutrient changes, Marine Pollution Bulletin, Volume 124, Issue 2, 2017, Pages 591-606, ISSN 0025-326X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2017.04.027.↩