Wool for Crop resilience 2.0 (KB-45-005-016)

1The presented proposal is a follow up of the project “Wool for Crop Resilience”, where we investigated the role of wool in crop resilience in horticulture. We tested the properties of raw (unwashed) and cleaned wool and tested their potential as alternative growing medium and as soil amendment to suppress soil diseases (general disease suppression). We learned that wool samples were rich in protein-derived nitrogen, especially the washed wool, which was also free from most of the fatty acids. Furthermore, washed wool at lower concentration in growing media seemed to improve strawberry plants performance, which ripened faster. Both, washed and unwashed wool seemed to increase photosynthesis activity in garden cress and seemed to delay Pythium disease spread. Finally, we found in washed wool bacteria and fungi with plant biostimulants properties. We showed the potential of wool as a soil additive, but there are still open questions about mechanisms, what is the potential of wool for resilience for other crops and the effect of different wool treatments on the observed effects.
With this follow up project we aim to design new experiments to (1) test the effect of different treatment methods in wool properties; (2) test how the already observed effects in strawberry and garden cress may apply to other important crops in horticulture, such as cucumber, assessing if we can reduce fertilizer input and reduce disease suppression, and we will (3) communicate our results broader, by organizing a seminar with sheep farmers and other stakeholders to present our learning points, together with writing a report and presenting our results during the community days.