Second Life: Development of sustainable recycled growing media

该研究项目将由Overland领导，并得到研究合作伙伴NIAB East Malling和专业分包商C. Donkin Limited（农学、基质开发）、Kelsey Farms（草莓生产商）的支持。它将调查挑战并评估从废椰壳基质中获得高质量、低疾病风险、可持续的再生生长介质所需的缓解战略。该项目还将开发、全面评估和基准回收和生产过程，以便可靠地标准化回收介质的生物、化学和物理特性。项目产出将为肯特郡和梅德韦郡的软果种植者以及更广泛的园艺行业提供可靠的椰壳回收服务，包括自动清除废培养基、回收/处理以降低病原体风险、培养基配方/标准化、装袋和运送到农场准备使用。软果种植者面临着越来越大的消费者压力，要求他们降低材料和劳动力成本，生产更实惠和可持续的产品。由于消费者的需求，以及原始椰胶材料成本、运输成本和劳动力价格的增加，市场对可负担、可持续和安全的再生椰胶介质的需求相当大，而且还在不断增长。我们的再生介质直接进入现有的软果种植实践，将允许肯特郡和梅德韦郡的种植者和农民以低成本、低能耗、稳健的方式重复使用他们的生长介质，取代现有的不稳定、昂贵、环境效率低下的全球供应链，从而以更低的成本提供改进的产品，成为循环、可持续农业系统的一部分。拟议的解决方案将通过减少运输原始椰子的能源和排放（每公顷生产9.7吨二氧化碳当量）以及单季种植技术产生的废物（每年在K&M处理约6万立方米患病椰子袋）来实现净零目标。它将降低成本，减轻劳动力负担，提高软果种植者的生产力，并创造一个当地的回收媒体生产部门，为英国园艺提供环保的基质。使用回收的椰胶代替原始椰胶，将大大减少产生的废物、进口椰胶的数量、所需的废物管理，以及运输原始材料的能源/碳足迹。

This research project will be led by Overland with support of research partner NIAB East Malling and specialist subcontractors: C. Donkin Limited (agronomy, substrate development), Kelsey Farms (strawberry producer). It will investigate the challenges and assess mitigation strategies required for high-quality, low disease risk, sustainable, recycled growing media from spent coir substrate. The project will also develop, comprehensively evaluate and benchmark recycling and production processes in order to reliably standardise the recycled media's biological, chemical and physical properties.Project outputs will provide soft fruit growers in Kent and Medway and the wider horticultural industry with a reliable coir recycling service including automated removal of spent media, recycling/processing to reduce the risk of pathogens, media formulation/standardisation, bagging and delivery to farm ready for use.Soft fruit growers are under increased consumer pressure to reduce their material and labour costs and produce more affordable and sustainable produce. The market demand for affordable, sustainable, and safe recycled coir media is considerable and growing due to consumer demand, and increased costs of virgin coir material, shipping, and labour prices. Slotting directly into existing soft fruit growing practices, our recycled media will allow growers and farmers based in Kent and Medway to reuse their growing media in a low-cost, low-energy, robust process and replace the existing volatile, expensive, and environmentally inefficient global supply chain thereby delivering an improved product at lower cost as part of a circular, sustainable farming system.The proposed solution will address Net-Zero targets through reducing the energy and emissions of shipping virgin coir (9.7 tonnes CO2eq per ha of production) and the waste produced by single-season growing techniques (~60 000 m3 diseased coir bags disposed in K&M yearly). It will reduce costs, ease the labour burden, increase productivity for soft fruit growers, and create a local recycling media production sector to supply UK horticulture with environmentally friendly substrates. The use of recycled coir over virgin will significantly reduce the waste generated, the amount of coir imported, the waste management required, and the energy/carbon footprint of shipping of virgin material.