Strong FertiCycle presence at ManuREsource conference

The 15 early stage researchers (ESRs, all PhD students at the institutes participating in FertiCycle) will make a strong contribution to the upcoming ManuREsource conference to be held in den Bosch, the Netherlands, 11-13th May this year.

ManuREsource is an international conference which has been held in Belgium or the Netherlands more or less every other year since 2013 - last year postponed due to Covid-19 restrictions though – so this spring a lot of researchers are looking forward to finally meeting up again in real life! ManuREsource 2021 aims to accelerate the transition towards a circular economy by exchanging experiences and knowledge with concerned international stakeholders and policy makers from all regions in Europe. Focus will be on the measures taken for coping with manure surpluses, both in terms of manure management in a broad sense, and more specifically in terms of current developments and innovations in manure treatment technologies and the various valorisation strategies for manure, like energy production and nutrient recovery.

Although only half-way through their PhD research, many of the FertiCycle ESRs already have interesting results to communicate, and many of them will make either oral or poster presentations of their interesting work at the conference. Some of these include:

  • Clara Kopp: Acid activation increases plant P availability from P-rich biochars and ashes (Oral presentation)
  • Lelanda Florent Kebalo: Modelling the effects of bio-based fertilisers on productivity and soil/air/water quality of different cropping systems including market garden in peri-urban agriculture (Oral presentation)
  • Mario Álvarez Salas: Stable Isotopes of Oxygen: The Key to Understand the Soil Fate and Cycling of Fertilizer Phosphorus?  (Oral presentation)
  • Khan Wali: Linking decomposition rates of bio-based fertilizers to their chemical composition using NIR and MIR spectroscopy - a wavelength selection approach (Poster)
  • Samaya El Hajj Hassan: Organic Carbon Eco-schemes: A New Market Opportunity for Fertilizers Products in Flanders, Belgium (Poster)
  • Aslihan Ural:  Nutrient emissions from agriculture to air and water: an integrated modelling approach for the European basins (Poster)
  • Tomas Sitzmann:  Compost properties influence organo-mineral fertilizers composition(Poster)
  • Yusra Zireeni:  The effect of slurry, acidification and S on the nutrients dynamics (Poster)
  • Jihane El Mahdi:  Improving fertilising properties and reduction of emissions from dairy manure by novel manure management strategies (Poster)
  • Jared Nyang'Au:  Nitrogen availability as influenced by pre-treatment technologies of biowastes in two-step anaerobic digestion (Poster)
  • Pietro Mendonca de Santos Sica:  Acidification of biogas fibres: effects on P characteristics and on P uptake by winter wheat (Triticum aestivum) when placed close to the seed (Poster)
  • Stamatis Chrysanthopoulos:  Alternative additives to perform acidification and alkalinization of animal manure (Poster)
  • Hellen Luis de Castro y Silva:  Effect of hydrothermal carbonization in manure-derived digestates – A pre-analysis of metal up-concentration in digestates (Poster)

The authors look forward to engaging with their audience – please feel free to ask questions!

Furthermore, as part of a PhD Winter School course we have been running online during the past winter, the ESRs will also use the conference for further information gathering on innovative technologies for biobased fertiliser production and utilisation as well as agronomic, environmental and market impacts. The course is titled ” Nutrient cycling and environmental and agronomic impacts - Sustainability of upcycled bio-based fertiliser production and use” and sessions of the course have been organised partly by the ESRs themselves, inviting guest lecturers and structuring group discussions on the various topics. Outcome of their participation in the Winter School and the ManuREsource conference will be a jointly authored chapter in an upcoming book on ”Developing circular/closed-loop agricultural production systems” (Ed. Prof. Barbara Amon) to be published by Burleigh Dodds Publishers later in 2022.

We all look forward to meet at the ManuREsource conference and to engage in exciting discussions and knowledge exchanges with many of you!