are awarded to talented research and valorisation teams that seek to make impact with biotechnology propositions. The route to award implies writing an innovation project and presenting it to a panel of business developers from different academic organisations across the Netherlands.
Green biotechnology for heat resilient tomatoes - Ivo Rieu
The growth in population in the face of climate change, i.e. rising temperatures, demands cultivation of heat tolerant crops. In the Netherlands, more and more frequent and erratic heatwaves disrupt crop fertility leading to significant losses in crop yield. Moreover, rising temperatures in Mediterranean countries have already dramatically decreased crop yield during summer in past years. Considering that plant breeding companies based in the Netherlands account for one-third of the world’s vegetable seed exports, meeting global food security (SDG2: Zero Hunger) is at stake unless Dutch plant breeders develop heat resilient crops. Current efforts building heat resilience in crops encompass the foliar application of stimulants, time-consuming traditional breeding pipelines based on phenotypic selection, and molecular breeding techniques. The latter is hindered by the current constraints in our understanding and access to the genes providing heat tolerance traits.
In this project, a team led by Prof. Ivo Rieu (Plant & Animal Biology, Faculty of Science) will devise a biotechnology providing heat resilience to tomato, with potential for application in a many other crops. The project will also explore the valorisation of the biotechnological asset developed for the Dutch plant breeding sector with the support of Dr Francisco J. Arjona Madueño (Radboud Innovation Science).
New ammonium biosensor for the optimisation of Nitrogen removal during wastewater treatment - Cornelia Welte
The ultimate goal of wastewater treatment is the conversion and removal of pollutants from water. Ammonium is one such pollutant which, using bacteria (called anammox), can be converted into harmless N2. However, at present, ammonium is often not fully converted into N2 in our wastewater treatment plants due to poor monitoring systems of the process of ammonium removal. This leads to ammonium discharges and release of the greenhouse gas N2O, impacting both human well-being and the environment, a considerable contribution to climate change. This is a pressing issue to the Dutch Water Authorities and indeed globally, impacting on UN Sustainability Goals: SDG3 (good health and well-being), SDG6 (clean water), SDG13 (climate action), SDG14 (life below water) and SDG15 (life on land).
Currently, ammonium-sensing practices in wastewater treatment plants encompass traditional analytical methods that are time-consuming, expensive, unsuitable for real-time monitoring, and lack the required sensitivity and specificity. Conversely, biological-based Nitrosomonas-biosensors have ensured accurate ammonium measurements. However, these biosensors do not operate in the anoxic conditions and pH ranges that are found in wastewater treatment systems.
In this project, a team led by Prof. Cornelia Welte (Microbiology, Faculty of Science) including expertise in microbiology and biosensor development (Dr Conall Holohan, Microbiology, Faculty of Science) and valorisation (Dr Francisco J. Arjona Madueño, Radboud Innovation Science), will demonstrate a new ammonium biosensor that overcomes the deficiencies present in the state-of-the-art. Implementation of this new biosensor will allow effective real-time monitoring of ammonium and operations in the low oxygen and anoxic conditions present in wastewater treatment plants.