BioWeedControl: Accelerating Europe’s transition towards a chemical-free agriculture

Descripción del proyecto

Una nueva forma de deshacerse de las malas hierbas

Las preocupaciones sobre el cambio climático van en aumento en los países de todo el mundo, por lo que se buscan formas de evitarlo o al menos mitigar sus efectos sobre el medio ambiente. Uno de los sectores que han sido objeto de mucha atención es el agrícola, más concretamente debido a su uso de herbicidas químicos contra las malas hierbas y el efecto perjudicial que estos tienen sobre el medio ambiente. Por desgracia, no se ha progresado mucho en relación con una solución a este problema. El proyecto BioWeedControl, financiado con fondos europeos, presenta un nuevo enfoque para combatir el problema: en lugar de emplear sustancias activas para matar las malas hierbas, impedirá su crecimiento mediante la adición de una capa física semipermeable al suelo.

Objetivo

"For the past four decades, weeds within agriculture have been mainly controlled through chemical herbicides but their widespread use has put great pressure on the environment, raised the number of herbicide-resistant species and partly even threatened human health. Increasing legislation, banning of chemical herbicides and opposition from farmers and citizens are forcing the agricultural industry to quickly find alternative solutions. Despite the growing demand for chemicals free herbicides, specifically in large scale row crops, today no solution has been adapted on larger scale within the market. Furthermore, no new mode of action for herbicides has been introduced since the early 1980s.
Bind-X is an award-winning start-up company with the vision to improve sustainability, profitability and innovation within the agricultural industry. Bind-X offers a radically different approach to prevent weed growth. Instead of the use of an active substance to kill weeds, ""BioWeedControl” impedes weed growth by inducing a mechanical/physical layer in the soil. Based on a bio-geochemical process Bind-X technology induces a semi-permeable layer within the soil matrix. Its weed prevention performance has already been demonstrated in multiple field tests on several specialty crops in cooperation with relevant partners in the industry. With this project, Bind-X is adapting its formulations for row crop applications and scaling up its production processes to achieve target costs and application volumes.
Bind-X offers a highly efficient solution to prevent weed growth, contributing towards removing thousands of tonnes of chemicals from our food chain and therewith to a more sustainable production of food. This project will further reduce the time-to-market, enable quicker international expansion and increase the company’s lead over competition. At the same time, the commercialisation of BioWeedControl will allow to generate 37 highly qualified jobs in Bind-X until 2023"