FIBININA: NEW PRECISION SUBSTRATES WITH ADVANCED PERFORMANCE BASED ON HIGH LIGNIN CONTENT PLANT FIBERS AS RAW MATERIALS.

The objective of this project is the research and development of a new range of substrates using plant fibers with high lignin content from different raw materials that present new advanced performance compared to those already on the market and, in addition, are environmentally more sustainable than the current ones, helping the growth of crops and collaterally enhancing the revaluation of by-products from circular economy.

This project will work to generate the necessary knowledge to lay the foundations for the development of a precision substrate in which the use of peat is displaced through the use of different plant fibers with high lignin content mixed together, seeking in turn to improve fundamental parameters in plant development, such as precocity, root development, aerial development, reduction of wastage, etc.

Although the most consumed substrate in sales volume has coir fiber, peat and perlite, PELEMIX wants to generate a new range of substrates where both perlite and peat can be eliminated by adding vegetable fibers with high lignin content, achieving a substrate that provides physical-chemical properties far superior to those existing in current substrates while enhancing sustainability, by replacing peat as raw material, and the circular economy, recycling and recovery of by-products by using plant fibers from forestry and agricultural waste as the basis for the development of these new substrates.

In order to achieve the general objective, PELEMIX has established three main specific technical objectives:

1. Development of a new range of substrates with a mixture of plant fibers with high lignin content to displace and eliminate the use of peat or perlite while improving the current physicochemical performance of substrates that integrate these components.
2. Study and characterization of the behavior of the new substrate developed in the project, formulated for the needs of different crops, looking for the optimal characteristics that enhance an optimal root and aerial development of the plants.
3. Generation of knowledge on the behavior of the new substrates in seedbeds and nurseries as well as in the field, and, with this, definition and validation of a final formulation, “Ideal advanced substrate” for each of the uses.

In conclusion, this is a project of high technological risk because there are no substrates in the state of the art that are formulated depending on the structure and origin of different plant fibers with high lignin content or their interaction with the different types of coir fiber that exist to manufacture substrates ranging from nursery to plant production, since in the state of the technique, Nowadays, there are only examples of the use of wood fiber, specifically of pine (and not of vegetable, agricultural and other forest residues as in the present Project), oriented to favor only a greater mechanical subjection of the plant and not an improvement in the development of the plants as well as the precocity, root development, development of the aerial part, reduction of wastes, etc.