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Greening Agriculture and Agrobiotechnologies

AgriNewTech, Turin
14:30 - 17:00 Site Visit
Worldwide interest in recycling by means of composting is growing, since composting is a widely accepted process for converting decomposable wastes of biological origin into stable, sanitized products, useful for agriculture.
Composting recycles or "downcycles" organic household and yard wastes and manures into an extremely useful humus-like, soil end-product called compost. Ultimately this allows the return of needed organic matter and nutrients into the food-chain and reduces the amount of "green" waste going into landfills. However only few composts can be used efficiently in the agricultural sector, in particular for horticulture and organic farming. Consequently compost is still considered to have generally a low quality and its price is still relative low compared to similar materials or fertilizers. Indeed compost is considered a waste by composting plants and they are paid by the community for the disposal of wastes rather than by the market. In such regard, it is necessary to modify the compost production system, to introduce advanced composting strategies mixing different wastes and improving composting techniques in order to optimize the final quality of compost.
University of Torino - Agroinnova developed an advanced methodology for analysis in order to assess the quality of composts. In particular, the assessment is related to the capacity of compost to suppress some important diseases of vegetables and flowers. Chemical pesticides have been widely used for several decades to control soil-borne pathogens. In recent years, prohibitions or severe restrictions to many commonly used pesticides and fumigants, methyl bromide among others, were taken for health and environmental concerns, and compost is a valid alternative to such fumigants. Compost can also provide a food base for biological control agents (BCAs) of soil-borne pathogens, and, consequently, BCAs can be isolated from suppressive composts or added to compost amendments. A spin-off company, AgriNewTech, was founded with the aims to transfer those experiences to growers and composting plants, providing innovative services for increasing the quality of compost, in particular for its use for controlling soil-borne plant pathogens in the agricultural sector, based on the enrichment with selected microorganisms.

mr. Massimo Pugliese University of Turin - Agroinnova

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