UC researchers develop new biologicals for agricultural crops

The Faculty of Sciences and Technology (FCTUC) is developing a new generation of biological products for crop protection and nutrition using a circular bio-economy approach. The research is part of the TEC4GREEN mobilisation agenda of the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR), which has a budget of €49 million, including around €1.5 million for the UC.

The TEC4GREEN agenda also aims to promote digital farming technologies for precision agriculture and implement agronomic decarbonisation for carbon neutrality. It will also promote the treatment and valorisation of water flows and agricultural by-products for green energy production.

The consortium, led by Ascenza Agro S.A., includes 17 strategic partnerships comprising nine companies, four non-corporate R&D entities, three business associations and one collaborative laboratory.

The UC leads one of the main work packages with a multidisciplinary team of 30 researchers from the Centre for Chemical Engineering and Renewable Resources for Sustainability (CERES), the Centre for Functional Ecology (CFE-UC) and the Molecular Physical-Chemistry Centre (QFM-UC).

Hermínio Sousa, professor at the Department of Chemical Engineering (DEQ) and researcher at CERES, besides generating knowledge and potential products, the TEC4GREEN agenda "will facilitate and contribute to building a stronger technical-scientific infrastructure at the University of Coimbra. This will support R&D activities in the extraction, separation and processing of natural products and biomass, the production of biogas, and the treatment and recycling of water and solvents".