Project description
Promoting low-peat horticulture substrates
Over 50 % of EU peatlands are degraded. Instead of providing carbon storage, they have become major greenhouse gas emitters. Meanwhile, horticulturists rely on peat as growing substrates and are reluctant to adopt alternatives for technical, socio-cultural and economic reasons. The EU-funded PEATLESS project will address these barriers, aiming to boost the uptake of sustainable alternative substrates in mushroom, seedling and ornamental production. To overcome technical barriers, growers will help co-design alternative low-peat blends, whose performance will be monitored by a digital sensoring system. As for socio-cultural barriers, social innovation activities will foster knowledge exchange to increase growers’ trust in alternatives, while comprehensive feasibility assessments and new business models will mitigate economic barriers.
Objective
Peatlands are crucial in climate change resilience as critical habitats for biodiversity, ecosystem services, and Carbon storage. Today, 50% of the EU peatland area is degraded due to peat extraction, with a high environmental impact associated and poses a high risk for the Green Transition goals. The horticultural industry depends entirely on peat for growing media, as current alternatives face technical, socio-cultural, and economic barriers. PEATLESS aims to contribute to overcoming these barriers to promote the uptake of sustainable and locally available substrates blends with reduced peat content in selected horticultural systems: mushrooms, seedlings and ornamental. These blends will be designed through co-creation and will be tailored to sectorial needs. The performance of these alternative media will be demonstrated and showed to growers at commercial facilities across 4 key regions for horticulture. To demonstrate performance and support decision-making, a digital sensoring system for results monitoring will be developed. To overcome socio-cultural barriers, social innovation, educational and innovative dissemination activities will boost knowledge exchange to raise growers’ confidence in alternatives to peat. To overcome economic barriers, an integral feasibility assessment will be developed (e.g. LCSA) followed by new business and organisational models’ creation. Furthermore, an upscaling plan to replicate the PEATLESS approach at national and European levels will ensure project continuation. This 3-year project involves 12 partners from 4 countries, including RTOs, universities, industry, end-users’ representatives and decision-makers, following a multi-actor approach. By 2050, significant long-term impact is expected, predominantly: 1) Environmental: 2.5m m3 of peat saved with a reduction of 900k t CO2eq); 2) Socio-economic: 5,000 horticultural business with PEATLESS substrates across 40 regions; 3) Policy: +30 recommendations.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.2.6 - Food, Bioeconomy Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation Actions
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) HORIZON-CL6-2024-CLIMATE-02
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26560 Autol
Spain
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.
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