Revolutionizing agriculture with advanced (nano, bio)materials: safe and sustainable by design, resilient and competitive

Project VANADIS will revolutionise agricultural practices by delivering, timely and effectively, novel, holistic and advanced solutions centred around safe-and-sustainable-by-design (SSbD) smart advanced nano-bio-materials (NB-AdMas). VANADIS has identified four key needs in agriculture: (1) smart and sustainable fertilizers miniaturised to efficiently deliver nutrients without wastage; (2) responsive and biocompatible pesticides for optimal and effective plant protection; (3) nano-based sensors for monitoring soil and water quality and (4) nano-enabled stimulators to increase resilience in plants and promote crop health. The project’s main objective is to provide solutions to these 4 key needs by pursuing revolutionary, novel, SSbD technological innovations, which will revitalise agricultural practices whilst ensuring resilience, competitiveness and public acceptance. The project will focus on identifying optimal formulations for the 4 key needs, and then testing these new agrochemicals on socio-economically critical crops (including wheat, maize, rapeseed, lettuce, potatoes, legumes and cereals), both in the greenhouse and in open farm environments. The range of farm locations covers several countries in Europe as well as worldwide. VANADIS will, in parallel, integrate its technologies within the latest European SSbD framework from the Joint Research Centre and align with approaches of the European Platform on Life Cycle Assessment. It will also assess the socioeconomic impacts and acceptance of its designed technologies. Finally, it will establish a FAIR data framework and ensure its technologies climb the TRL ladder (from 3 to 6) whilst also disseminating its outputs as broadly as possible within and outside Europe.