Project description
Furnishing farmers with data to grow their own soil strategies
Soil is the foundation of agriculture. It’s an essential and non-renewable resource, providing the basis for the production of food, fibre, and other resources for a circular bioeconomy. Gathering real-time data about soil health is vital for farmers. Recognising this, the EU-funded MicCropHealth project will bring to market the first patented smart microbiome-based platform that is able to identify the whole soil microbiome from a soil sample. It uses its database of soil microbial profiles to provide data to farmers so they can make intelligent and personalised decisions about their strategies and practices. The information from the platform will allow farmers to maintain soil health and minimise crop spoilage.
Objective
Biomemakers is an innovative biotechnology company founded in 2015 and specialized in the identification and understanding of the microbiome and its influence on the agri-food industry. We were selected by Illumina as the first European company to join the Illumina Acceleration program.
We have developed the first patented smart microbiome-based platform, MicCropHealth, that is able to identify the whole soil microbiome from a soil sample with our database of soil microbial profiles to provide valuable data to farmers. Thanks to MicCropHealth, farmers will make intelligent and personalized decisions about their strategies and practices.
Despite the money farmers currently spend on nutritional supplements or phytosanitary products (mainly pesticides and fungicides), the impact of diseases on many crops is enormous. Direct economic losses associated with diseases in woody crops are around €34,000.00 per Hectare (cost of replanting); and the indirect losses associated with the derived lack of product sales reach up to €250,000 per ha.
MicCropHealth is addressing the Precision Agriculture (PA) Software Market, which is expected to reach M€1,189 by 2022 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.03% between 2016 and 2022. Our initial target markets are added value crops, such as fruit trees. In Europe, the 7 main species of fruit occupy an area of 1.29 million ha.
MicCropHealth will allow farmers to make decisions based on what they know about soil health status, the use of nutrients and phytosanitary products, how to minimize crops spoilage or even assess the effect of agronomical practices in the microbial diversity of soils. This will provide our company with a generation of cumulative profit of M€9.1 during the first five years on the market and 17 new direct jobs.
Fields of science
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesdatabases
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesagriculturehorticulturefruit growing
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencessoil sciencesedaphology
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesecologyecosystems
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiology
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
47006 Valladolid
Spain
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.