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NUTRIALGAE
July 26, 2024
Objectives pursued
Development of a technology for extracting auxins and cytokinins from marine algae species Macrocystis pyrifera and Laminaria hyperborea to obtain a bio-stimulant that guarantees the levels and availability of phytohormones.
Ficosterra has developed a technology based on low-temperature extraction that preserves the desired active component without increasing production costs.
THE CHALLENGE OF 21st CENTURY AGRICULTURE
The current agricultural sector faces a huge challenge: feeding a growing population while adhering to more sustainable practices that involve reducing chemical products.
To support this new population, agriculture has adopted more complex and costly farming systems that involve optimizing plant growth and productivity by selecting high-yield varieties, which often require highly assisted and costly cultivation plans, abundant irrigation plans, and the use of agrochemicals, fertilizers, and pesticides that largely leach from the soil to groundwater, rivers, and oceans, causing eutrophication and loss of biodiversity.
In a context of strong economic, social, and regulatory pressure in the EU (2019/1009 Regulation 1107/2009), farmers are aware that they must change their agricultural practices to reduce their environmental impact. At the same time, they have a commitment to our society to maintain productivity levels in line with the population’s needs.
In this dilemma, the market increasingly offers sustainable solutions that help reduce the use of chemical fertilizers without reducing crop productivity.
Among these new products are bio-stimulants and bio-fertilizers capable of regenerating the soil and stimulating the crop’s natural processes to improve nutrient absorption and efficiency, strengthen tolerance to biotic and abiotic stress, and consequently increase productivity.
There are also some natural-origin solutions that provide phytohormones and numerous active principles that help regulate plant growth in all its phenological stages. Among these new sustainable solutions, marine algae extracts are the most popular.
MARINE ALGAE:
A SUSTAINABLE SOURCE OF NATURAL AUXINS
Marine-origin phytohormones play a fundamental role in coordinating growth and behavior processes in plant life cycles. They promote the plant’s apical growth during all its phenological stages. They serve as signaling molecules for the development of plant organs and for the regulation and coordination of growth.
However, the products available on the market today still do not reach the desired efficiency. Most do not contain, for example, indoleacetic acid (IAA) or include it in very low concentrations (1 ppm or less), which largely explains their low effectiveness. Therefore, farmers have to resort to more applications or have to apply them alongside other synthetic products, significantly increasing this process’s cost.
Farmers face a gap between marketing that creates high expectations and the scarce results obtained from the products. The reason lies in the low concentrations of hormones offered by current biological products.
The market’s challenge is to address new extraction methods that ensure high concentrations of phytohormones without high costs for producers, who increasingly face narrower economic margins.
The R&D department of the Spanish Marine Biotechnology company Ficosterra has managed to develop an exclusive technique for extracting auxins (IAA) from marine algae. This pioneering system guarantees a very high concentration of natural auxins (indoleacetic acid) from a raw material such as brown algae of the Laminariaceae family. These algae are characterized by being some of the largest in the world and having a very rapid and intense growth and nutrient storage capacity.
This technology, called Total Recovery Deployment (TRD), achieves the extraction of certain substances present in these algae cells at room temperature and without chemical elements. It uses a gaseous solvent at low temperatures that preserves the purity and integrity of natural phytohormones like auxins (indoleacetic acid).
This technology allows obtaining inputs with IAA concentrations higher than 10 ppm (up to 15 ppm), enabling the replacement of chemically derived phytohormones with biological ones, guaranteeing the same results and costs at all times.
The TRD technology is quantified and validated by the Spanish Government’s Superior Council of Scientific Research and its uniqueness has earned it a Seal of Excellence from the European Union. It is currently in the development phase with funding of €1,100,000 from the Center for Development and Innovation of the Spanish Government.
- The quintessential auxin hormone is indoleacetic acid (IAA), the one with the highest phytohormonal activity. It is present in most plants with a regulatory function in plant growth. Therefore, products containing this type of hormone, whether synthetic or biological, are absolutely essential in today’s Agriculture.
Project SoE-20221012
Economic allocation: €1,608,440.00
Start date: 01/01/2023
End date: 31/12/2024
External collaborations:
- University of León Institute of Environment, Natural Resources and Biodiversity
- Superior Council of Scientific Research (CSIC)