The UK's 2030 peat ban is causing financial and technical challenges for professional growers accustomed to using peat. Here, DEFRA's "Ending the Use of Peat" impact assessment predicts that these over 15,000 growers--including food, ornamental and tree seedling producers--will face: * £192.6m transition cost over the coming decade * £456.1m in profit losses due to increased costs of using peat-free media These staggering costs will harm an industry that operates on thin margins and is essential to British food security. Here, the House of Lords Horticulture sector committee's "Sowing the Seeds" report notes "Businesses cannot make the transition to peat-free without financial support for R&D." Glasshouse growers are particularly affected, and many crops, including salad greens, tomatoes and leeks, peat's unique built-in structure to support plants without pots or other external support. Free-standing peat propagation blocks enable growers to automate transplanting and use growing space more efficiently, thereby boosting production, decreasing labour costs and providing affordable, British grown produce for consumers. However, all these benefits are under threat due to a lack of satisfactory peat-free alternatives. Currently, peat-free blocks crumble over time, weakening the plant and/or collapse during transplanting, killing the plant. Alternatives include expensive paper-based containers that do not work with all crops or stabilised plugs based on polyurethane that has slow biodegradability which poses environmental challenges for growers. This project seeks to address growers' needs by validating our innovation, LatticeGro. LatticeGro is a one stop peat-free solution that can be moulded into mechanically-strong blocks, providing support throughout the plant's development and a delay release nitrogen source. Importantly, LatticeGro has been designed to work with current growing practices and production systems, requiring no additional investment into grower's infrastructure, thereby making the transition to peat-free growing possible. This project will further develop and validate LatticeGro with salad crop growers, testing it on production machinery to ensure it is fit for purpose.

The sheep industry is a defining feature across Scotland and the UK. According to InnovateUK KTN's recent Wool Innovation Action Plan, sheep rearing is * "the foundation of rural economies where there are limited alternative employment opportunities" * "contributes £291.4m to the economy" * "employs 34,000 people on farms and...111,405 jobs in allied industries." Although this industry's main product is lamb, in 2021 the UK exported 36 million kilograms of wool worth $58 million (USD), "in 2020 UK farmers were receiving just 15-30p per fleece, yet paying more than £1 to have each sheep sheared". The report declares wool "a readily available, largely wasted resource," calling for innovation to create new uses for wool and its byproducts. Furthermore, less than 50% of wool entering the value chain is ultimately usable as textiles, leaving the majority as waste and byproduct materials amounting to at least 35 million kgs in 2021 (FAOSTAT). Simultaneously, the UK's 2030 peat ban is causing financial and technical challenges for professional growers accustomed to using peat. Here, DEFRA predicts that these over 15,000 growers--including food, ornamental and tree seedling producers--will face: * £192.6m transition cost over the coming decade * £456.1m in profit losses due to increased costs of using peat-free media These staggering costs will harm an industry that operates on thin margins and is essential to British food security. Here, the House of Lords Horticulture sector committee's "Sowing the Seeds" report notes "Businesses cannot make the transition to peat-free without financial support for R&D." The report highlights grower concerns surrounding imported materials, "...we are supplanting...\[emissions savings\]...with emissions resulting from importing alternatives such as coir, effectively exporting our carbon footprint." Our project seeks to answer these two distinct needs by creating a circular and sustainable peat-free growing media for professional growers that incorporates wool waste. Here, we will use and develop our proprietary microorganism and enzyme blend to process wool mill waste streams to unlock their horticultural potential and mechanically process wool waste to improve its mixability. This will not only answer grower's needs but also provide a new, non-competing supply chain for wool waste materials.

Globally, governments and private organisations set ambitious commitments for tree planting and forest regeneration programmes, at an estimated cost of £1.5 billion per year. Demand for tree saplings is increasing in the UK and abroad. However, COVID-19 disruptions caused losses for the forest nursery sector and will likely lead to plant supply shortages in the coming years. The sector is also vulnerable to increasingly erratic weather. For example, the 2018 heatwave impacted the nursery trade across Northern hemisphere. At UK nurseries, up to 90% of viable seeds were lost due to poor germination. Finally, without a strong, vibrant domestic timber supply, the UK will become reliant on international imports which naturally have a higher carbon footprint. Depending on where and how the timber was harvested, imports may also decrease global biodiversity. At SilviBio, we want to address this quandary through our seed enhancement technologies that increase conifer seed germination rates. By improving germination rates, our technology will enable more efficient seed use that directly results in more trees for forest nurseries and helps the Government's reach its tree planting targets. Specifically, we want to modify our technology to improve scalability of application and enhance access to our product.