WeFe
From Weed to Feed and Food
Circular economy
Overview
Livestock breeding, aquaculture and horticulture in North-west Europe face major challenges. Nutrient emissions (N, P, K) need to be further reduced because of new environmental regulations, both towards water and air, while at the same time it is expected that the prices for feed will increase because of a reduced availability and/or higher prices for nutrients. A possible solution for these challenges, or maybe a total new direction, is a circular approach: re-use of nutrients within the livestock breeding and aquaculture sector. Instead of ‘destroying’ nutrients during waste water and manure treatment processes, nutrients should be recovered for feed and food production. A promising development for the re-use of nutrients within the livestock breeding sector and aquaculture sector is the growth of Duckweed on aqueous residues followed by the application in animal or fish feed or as food (e.g. meat substitutes). Either directly or after a processing step of the Duckweed. The last decade, several projects on Duckweed production and application have been initiated. This has led to a lot of knowledge on the growth of Duckweed, legal aspects concerning the application of Duckweed, and the extraction of valuable compounds from Duckweed. The next step that is needed to make the application of protein extraction from Duckweed a success, is the consideration of the whole chain (livestock breeding and aquaculture – residue treatment and valorisation - feed & food sector) in combination with the development from TRL5 (large scale prototype) to TRL7 (demonstration system) or TRL8 (first of a kind commercial system).