UK-China Agritech Challenge Zero-Waste Agricultural Mulch Films for Crops in China (ZEWAMFI)

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This collaborative project aims at improving sustainable agriculture in China with positive impacts on farming communities,specifically a continuous increase of crop yield productivity (and associated farmer's wealth) with reduced use of water, andagrochemicals (nitrogen fertilisers, and pesticides), therefore improving farm workers safety. With the advent of GlobalWarming, semi-arid regions from Asia and the Middle East are forecasted to receive less rainfall making the use of suchfilms a necessity for the production of arable food crops.The project will develop cost competitive agricultural mulch films for arable crops that will perform during use but degradethereafter and have no negative impact in terms of producing micro-plastics.Agriculture plastics are used in China to improved grain crop yield and water use efficiency through conserving water,maintaining soil moisture, suppressing losses due to weeds/birds, increasing temperature and improving cold tolerance.Their use has led to a 20-35% increase in grain crop yield and a 20-60% increase in cash crop yield. Maize, wheat, cottonand potato yields have increased by 33.7%, 33.2%, 26.1% and 36.7%, respectively, while their corresponding water useefficiency levels have increased by 38.9%, 30.2%, 30.2% and 37.8%. The typical application time of agricultural plasticsmulches in agriculture lasts only a few months and can be reduced even further when exposed to extreme weather eventssuch as hail and storms due to physical fragmentation and chemical ageing processes. These generate significant amountsof non-degradable, hardly recyclable waste, which pollute the environment either through incineration emissions, landfillleaching or microplastic residues. If not removed from the field, plastic waste accumulates in the environment where it maypose a considerable threat to terrestrial and aquatic wildlife when taken up in the food chain.This project focuses on novel plastic films that will maintain benefits related to increased crop productivity but will eliminatemicroplastic pollution in land, an unfortunate consequence of the agri-plastic mulch use, by being soil degradable. Negativeimpacts of microplastic pollution of oceans are well described and recent research has shown that where plastic mulcheshave been used and ploughed back into fields repeatedly, microplastic residue ranges from 72 kg/ha to 260 kg/ha. Plantgrowth is inhibited at these levels, and the accumulated plastic residue may affect soil moisture, nutrient transport, andsecondary salinization.Compostable polyester mulch films have been introduced in the EU/US market, but these are expensive and can be usedin high-value horticultural production.This collaborative project will design polymeric films that will be cost-competitive and could be used in arable crops (wheat,maize) will be stable during use, coupled with an end-of-life scenarios where they will be eaten by soil micro-organisms.The initial degradation will be catalyzed by oxodegradable additives, that will fragment the material, and specific enzymes/micro-organisms with suitable formulation will then metabolize the remaining material. Credible science data to evaluatethe behaviour of high performance agricultural polymeric materials will back-up the claims made on the productsA major consortium to deliver the above include Wells Plastic, currently exporting oxo-biodegradable resins and join knowhowdeveloped by academic partners CAAS and Bangor Uni. CASS is the main academic institution in China involved ininvestigating plastics in agriculture, and Bangor University has bee working on bioplastics (for food applications) but hasalso unique collections of microorganisms collected over years (both from marine, and forestry sources).