Innovative plastic materials, natural additives and novel irrigation technologies will improve the performance of Mediterranean greenhouses
Organisation or Company
Type of organisation or company
Country
Spain
City
Valencia
Project elaborated in partnership
Yes
Partners
SMARTWALL (SW), France
ECOFARM - Egyptian-Russian Company for Advanced Agriculture
Sector
Submitted by
AIMPLAS
Start/End date
Ongoing
Yes
AIMPLAS
Description
The AZMUD project will help reduce the consumption of water, energy, nutrients and pesticides, and promote the use of wastewater in irrigation and soilless systems. The performance of Mediterranean greenhouses will improve by 15% thanks to synergic combinations of innovative technologies (plastic materials, natural additives and irrigation technologies).
The Plastics Technology Centre AIMPLAS is coordinating the AZMUD consortium, made of 8 partners from 5 different Mediterranean countries: Egypt, France, Jordan, Spain and Turkey.
Main activity field
Main results
- AZMUD will address the challenge of reducing the cost and increasing the efficiency of heating systems by developing a local joule heating system for heating plant roots based on electrically conductive plastics integrated into standard soilless systems.
- AZMUD will also adapt and optimize a low-energy drip irrigation system working under soilless greenhouse conditions to increase the use of wastewater and reduce water and energy needs.
- The use of magnetically-treated water will also make it possible to control the number of pathogens/plant parasites.
- AZMUD transparent agriculture films are compostable and three times more resistant than current ones.
- Pesticide control release systems and coating pesticides are starting to be used, but their joint use is still problematic.