Congratulations to Johanna Larsson and Nina Safavi, who have won the award for their method in which plants are used to extract and stabilise pollutants in the environment.
Green industry is facing a major sustainability challenge. More food needs to reach more consumers at the same time as society needs to become more climate positive. There is a need for new thinking and innovations, not least within agriculture and forestry. This is why Sparbanken Skåne, through its owner foundation Sparbanksstiftelsen Finn and SLU Alnarp, is investing in stimulating new innovations from researchers and students at SLU Alnarp.
“This year’s Innovation Award demonstrates the breadth of the knowledge building that takes place at SLU’s Alnarp campus. We’re pleased that the first prize is now being awarded to new areas that have not previously been at the top of the podium and hopeful this will lead to even more innovation throughout the campus,” says Christina Lunner Kolstrup, Dean of the Faculty of Landscape Architecture, Horticulture and Crop Production Sciences at SLU’s Alnarp campus.
There was fierce competition between project applications featuring cutting-edge science, so this year the jury has explored the limits of the system-changing project parameters to find a winner with great potential benefit for society. With the objective of the award being to stimulate innovation and entrepreneurship throughout the Alnarp campus, extra thought has gone into weighing up the natural science innovations that often dominate the podium against innovations from other disciplines on campus.
Katarina Andrén, the CEO of Sparbanksstiftelsen Finn, appreciates the importance of the innovation award and its influence on academic culture:
“A sustainable society requires change and everyone must be along for the journey. It’s therefore even more pleasing that this year the award has been won by students who present sustainable ways forward with groundbreaking ideas,” concludes Katarina Andrén.
This year’s jury consisted of Lennart Wikström from Tejarps Förlag, Magdalena Bergh from Lantmännen and Janne Rundqvist, entrepreneur and chairman of Svenska Foder.
Johanna Larsson and Nina Safavi, students on the Master’s Programme in Landscape Architecture at the Department of Landscape Architecture, Planning and Management.
This is the first time in the award’s four-year history that first prize has been won by competitors in the student category.
The cornerstone of the Phyto-Matter project is phytoremediation, a process which extracts and stabilises pollutants in the environment using plants. By analysing the contaminated soil, suitable plants are identified that can grow in the environment and absorb the toxins from the soil as an alternative to extensive relocation of land masses and high decontamination costs. The winning project presents an advanced method in which plants not only decontaminate the soil but are also used as raw material for building components in the construction of the surrounding community. The entire process is packaged in a regenerative solution that builds stronger communities in environments that have been exposed to environmental stress from ambient emissions for some time.
The jury’s reasoning
This year’s winners have presented a visionary method for tackling a very important and common environmental problem that is faced by almost every part of the world where there is industrial activity. The winning proposal is innovative, takes a transdisciplinary perspective and uses a systemic approach to present a method for combining the restoration of degraded environment with unique features that increase not only environmental sustainability but also social and economic sustainability. The jury wishes to emphasise that the proposal’s transdisciplinary approach to the problem has been a significant factor in its success in the competition.
Fungal pellets for water treatment
Malin Hultberg, Senior Lecturer in Horticulture at the Department of Biosystems and Technology.
A transdisciplinary project that brings together knowledge from mushroom cultivation, water purification and enzymes to create a method that uses pellets from edible mushrooms to purify water with a simple, safe and low-cost technique.
A modular toolbox for genome editing in plant breeding
Paul Vogel, Per Hofvander, Mariette Andersson, Niklas Olsson and Martin Friberg from the Department of Plant Breeding.
The researchers present a tool that enables both higher efficiency and specific design in genome editing with the CRISPR/Cas9 technique. The tool makes it possible not only to determine where the genetic variation should be introduced but also what it should look like after it has been introduced, which in turn provides completely new control of the technique within plant breeding.
The award is open to all ideas, but the sustainability aspect of the proposals will be a central aspect of the assessment.
The total prize money of SEK 200,000 is divided into a first prize of SEK 100,000 and two growth prizes of SEK 50,000 each. Prizes are awarded in both the student and researcher category.
https://www.slu.se/innovationspriset
Nicholas Jakobsson, SLU Holding, Alnarp
+46 (0)73 3 70 35 50
Katarina Andrén, CEO Sparbanksstiftelsen Finn
+46 (0)70 5 47 52 00
Johanna Larsson och Nina Safavi prisas för sitt projekt Phycho-Matter.
Foto: Peter Timár Lönneborg
Old browsers only have partial support for new technology and doesn't give the website an honset chance to live up to its fully potential. You can easily download an other web browser that works better. Here is only a few modern browsers that works great!
