AbDü project: a visit at Behr AG in Seevetal to plan this year’s field trials

Today, Anika Jürß and Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher visited Alexandra Schulz and Dr. Georg Mevenkamp at the premises of Behr AG in Seevetal, South of Hamburg. Behr AG, one of the largest producers of fresh vegetables in Germany and a partner in our project “AbDü - From waste to fertilizer: the black soldier fly as a living bioreactor”. While a prototype of the container-based reactor is being built and tested, and while we are in the process of scaling-up the production of our tried-and-tested chitosan from the Black Soldier Flies to be used as a plant biostimulant, we will now start our first field trials on iceberg lettuce using our benchmark biostimulant based on second-generation shrimp chitosans. To get a feeling of the lay of the fields and the options for the planned experiments, we met on site, watching how small lettuce seedlings were planted by a group of workers on a huge semi-automatic planter. We were more than impressed by the speed and precision of the planting. It will be an excellent site for a field trial that will give us reliable information on how our chitosan may be used to reduce the need for fertilizers by improving the plants’ nutrient use efficiency. We are looking forward to the first of a series of field trials in Seevetal!