Development of green-tech functionalized, biodegradable fibrous plant nursery bags in ecological seedlings cultivation

 

Project Summary

Plant nursery bags that are typically used in seedlings production mainly consist of low-density polyethylene which is a non-biodegradable plastic material. As a consequence, upon seedling planting, a large amount of plastic waste ends up in the environment. The primary objective of PlantNGreen is the development of innovative biodegradable nano/microfibrous “green” plant nursery bags that will further functionalized with selected plant growth promoters for use in ecological seedlings cultivation, thus promoting both, environmental protection and seedlings growth promotion. The implementation of this project will be based on a strong and effective collaboration to be established between the 2 public academic institutions in Cyprus and 2 local enterprises.

Project Objectives

PlantNGreen is fully compatible with the specific objectives of the CO-DEVELOP Programme and the Green Transition priority area, as well as with the Priority Sector (S3Cy) of ‘‘Sustainable Growth-Environment’’ an extremely important Sector of Priority.

The Host Organisation (HO) of PlantNGreen project is the University of Cyprus. PlantNGreen intends to build an effective collaboration based on the expertise of two academic research teams coming from the 2 public academic institutions (University of Cyprus, UCY/HO and Cyprus University of Technology, CUT/PA1) and 2 industrial partners (Elysee Irrigation Ltd., Elysee/PA2 and AMDM/PA3 - Advanced Materials Design & Manufacturing Limited, AmaDema), having complementary knowledge and infrastructure in materials engineering and polymer processing/electrospinning (UCY, AmaDema), plant physiology (CUT) and irrigation systems for agricultural applications (Elysee). This inter-disciplinary partnership ensures the successful project implementation resulting to a highly significant research/technological output.

Partners

Funding Agencies

The Project CODEVELOP-GT/0322/033 is funded by the European Union - NextGenerationEU, through the Research and Innovation Foundation.