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“By developing biobased biopesticides from by-products of the [cannabis production] industry that is booming at a national level, particularly in the Alentejo, the ValorCannBio project will contribute to the goals set by the European Commission in the Farm to Fork and Biodiversity Strategy of reducing the use of chemically synthesized pesticides by 50% by 2030,” Cristina Azevedo, director of the New Biopesticides Department at InnovPlantProtect (InPP), told Público newspaper.

O ValorCannBio - Valorization of medicinal cannabis by-products as a biopesticide for olive groves“ project”, led by InPP and presented on September 25 to mark National Sustainability Day, The article “Scientists in Portugal want to use cannabis waste to make environmentally friendly pesticides” is featured in Público today.

ValorCannBio is one of the winning projects in the 6th edition of the la Caixa Foundation's Promove Program and aims to transform waste from the production of medicinal cannabis into biological, sustainable pesticides capable of controlling the main olive tree diseases.

The initiative also has the partnership of the Associated Laboratory for Green Chemistry (LAQV) of the Faculty of Science and Technology of the New University of Lisbon NOVA FCT and the companies GreenBePharma and AGR by De Prado.

Find out more in the article featured in Público, available at here.

On National Sustainability Day, the project “ValorCannBio - Valorization of medicinal cannabis by-products as a biopesticide for olive groves” was announced, led by InnovPlantProtect (InPP) in partnership with the Associated Laboratory for Green Chemistry (LAQV) of the Faculty of Science and Technology of the New University of Lisbon |
NOVA FCT and the companies GreenBePharma (GBP) - production of medicinal cannabis and AGR Global - cultivation and production of olive groves (De Prado Group), one of the winners of the 6th edition of the ”la Caixa” Foundation's Promove Program, in collaboration with BPI and the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), in the category of innovative pilot projects. The project will make it possible to exploit the by-products of medicinal cannabis production as sustainable and effective biopesticides to control the main diseases of the olive grove.

InPP is marking National Sustainability Day with the public presentation of the ValorCannBio project, which seeks to contribute to sustainability by developing sustainable biopesticides to control two of the most important diseases of the olive grove, a crop of extreme economic and social importance in the Alentejo: Gafa and Tuberculosis. Gafa is considered a priority because it causes production losses of up to 100 percent, corresponding to more than 50 million euros, a reduction in olive oil quality and is leading to the disappearance of the genetic heritage of traditional olive varieties such as the Galician, which is highly susceptible to the disease. Tuberculosis is an olive disease that spreads to almost all olive groves and reduces the quality of the oil.

In order to help control the two diseases that affect olive groves, the team of researchers involved in the project will develop a biopesticide from the leaves of the cannabis plant, which are considered surplus from the medical cannabis production process in Portugal and legally have to be destroyed. This process will make it possible to meet the needs of olive growers, but also to open up a new value chain associated with the use of a by-product of the plant's production industry for medicinal purposes.

“The existing solutions on the market to combat Gafa and Tuberculosis are ineffective and fall into groups of chemically synthesized pesticides, which have negative impacts on the environment and are being discontinued, so it is urgent to find alternatives. On the other hand, cannabis companies could sell the surplus biomass to a future biopesticide industry, avoiding the high costs of destruction and investing in a circular economy. This project aims to integrate the concepts of sustainable agriculture, combined with green chemistry, to obtain more environmentally friendly products,” explains Ana Rita Duarte, a researcher at the LAQV of the Faculty of Science and Technology of Universidade Nova de Lisboa |NOVA FCT.

For Cristina Azevedo, director of the New Biopesticides department at the collaborative laboratory InPP, based in Elvas, “by developing biobased biopesticides from by-products of an industry that is booming at national level, particularly in the Alentejo, ValorCannBio will contribute to the goals set by the European Commission in the Farm to Fork and Biodiversity Strategy, of reducing the use of chemically synthesized pesticides by 50 percent by 2050.”.

The director of the InPP department also assures us that “all the impacts of ValorCannBio will initially be felt in the municipality of Elvas, where the project will take place. However, it is expected that these will extend to the entire olive-growing region, from Trás-os-Montes to the Algarve, where production losses due to Gafa and Tuberculosis are on the increase.”.

The project presented today has been awarded to a team that has already won several national and international awards.

The Promove program wants entities to use their non-repayable grants to move from theory to practice: to understand the viability of scientific concepts under development, as well as to explore business opportunities or prepare patent applications. In this specific case, the team wants to assess the commercial potential of this new solution in the market.

For more information on ValorCannBio, visit the project's website here.

InnovPlantProtect (InPP) is promoting the “Plant Biotech talks”, at which internationally renowned experts in the fields of applied plant biotechnology and cereal crop biotechnology will share developments in these areas, as well as the new genomic techniques that have been applied to rice production and crop protection. The event will take place next Tuesday, September 24th, in the INIAV auditorium in Elvas.

The “Plant Biotech talks” kick off at 10 a.m. with the session entitled “Plant biotechnology, 1980-2024".. From Round-up Ready soy to Genome Editing and beyond” which will feature Paul Christou, Professor and director of the Applied Plant Biotechnology Laboratory at the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) at the University of Lleida, in Catalonia, Spain, who will reveal the path and evolution of the field of Plant Biotechnology. The starting point will be the first commercial crop sold by the Multinational Company Monsanto, Roundup Ready Soybean, developed by the researcher through genetic transformation technology.

The second session entitled “Communicating science through art and archaeology” will take place at 11 a.m. with speaker Teresa Capell, Professor and Director of the Department of Plant Production and Forestry Sciences at ICREA, who will explore how science can be communicated through art, since the combination of art and science can be beneficial not only for science itself but for society as a whole. This practice has become a favorite for conveying science to the public.

Now Xin Huang, a researcher in the Department of Agriculture and Forestry Engineering at ICREA, will be the speaker at the third session entitled “Knocking our rice blast susceptibility genes through Genome Editing”, which will take place from 12h00. In this session, the guest speaker will talk about the genes responsible for plant susceptibility to pests and pathogens, in particular the fungus Magnaporthe oryzae, This is the first time that we've heard of a pathogen that causes an important disease affecting the rice plant, pyriculariosis. Genome editing technologies that allow, in a very specific and controlled way, to alter genes in the plant, making it more tolerant to pathogens will be other topics covered in this session.

Participation in the event is free and not subject to registration.