Engineered ecosystem development for Agro-Process Intensification

Abstract

The principles of Process Intensification and Miniaturization technology, originally developed for chemicals processing, biotechnology and tissue engineering were applied to achieve plant growth and crop yield enhancement, which can be described as AgroProcess Intensification (A-PI). The basic principle of A-PI is the enhancement of multiple interactions between plant roots, water, nutrients, bacteria using micro-(bio)reactors as synthetic rhizosphere in soil (SRS) which is a highly porous nano-structured hydrophilic ionic macro-porous polymer. If soil fertility is not limited by water, nutrients or bacteria then these soil additives do not have any function, although they can still be used as root delivery system for plant protection. In this study, we used nutrient and bacterium depleted soil with or without water stress to grow soybean in order to demonstrate the effect of the SRS in enhancing biomass growth under stress. Through an extensive scanning electron microscopy studies, it is shown that AgroProcess Intensification is achieved through the association of the plant roots with SRS which retains both soil water and nutrients and transfer them to the plant while protecting the nitrogen fixing bacterium. Implications of this method are discussed in terms of engineering of ecosystem to grow crops and biomass in substandard soil under water and fertilizer stress.

Agro-process intensification: soilborne micro-bioreactors with nitrogen fixing bacterium Azospirillum brasilense as self-sustaining biofertiliser source for enhanced nitrogen uptake by plants

“…The results for all treatments for the first harvest suggest that during the first harvest, the effect of SRS media and A. brasilense are not significant due to lack of any water and nutrient stress. The effect of SRS media starts showing at the second harvest for treatment 2 (grass+PHP), which suggests that the PHP is acting as a slow release fertiliser capturing any runaway nutrients, similar to observations made previously [1][2][3][4]. However, there is no corresponding enhancement in treatment 4 (grass+PHP+ A. brasilense ).…”

Surface modification of monolithic PolyHIPE Polymers for anionic functionality and their ion exchange behavior

“…Due to these attributes, PHPs and their metallic, ceramic or composite forms have been used in the emerging technology of Process Intensification (PI), which facilitates the establishment of green processes. In addition to use of PHPs in analytical sciences, the important specific applications of PHPs in PI include: Agro‐PI, Bio‐PI, Chemical‐PI, including Separation processes, Energy and Environmental‐PI, and medicine and tissue engineering . A recent review of some of these applications is available…”

“…In most of the large scale applications of PHPs, such as agriculture and separation and energy‐environmental processes, the bulk and surface functionality of PHP requires ion‐exchange capacity. The required anionic or cationic characteristics are dictated by the nature of the application.…”

“…The most important difference between the commercial and PHP‐based ion‐exchangers is the accessibility of the ion‐exchange sites in PHP which accelerates the exchange kinetics and allows the utilization of full exchange capacity.…”

“…Cation exchange PHPs have been used at large scale in agricultural and separation processes which resulted in large levels of intensification compared with the well established techniques. It is likely that in agricultural and separation processes as well as in biological applications, there is a real need for PHPs with anionic functionality.…”