Grant: Idea to Innovation

The constant decline in the area of cultivable lands, and the increasing global population have created the need to maximize productivity from available agricultural land and resources. Dr. Frank Gu from the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Waterloo has developed a biodegradable root-targeted delivery vehicle (RTDV) for on-demand release of nutrients and water to sustain plant health. The development of such device is aimed at increasing the sustainability of large-scale agriculture and horticulture by improving the efficiency of usage of fertilizers, micronutrients, pesticides, insecticides and water. It has been established that the RTDV can reduce up to 45% of fertilizers and 70% of water requirements for growing wheat plants without compromising plant health and yield. The three main objectives for the proposed work are: 1) Optimize the shape and size of the delivery device for the growth of landscape and ornamental plants in green house and in field, and compare plant growth using RTDV with commercially available controlled release fertilizer products. 2). Delivery of multiple classes of hydrophilic and hydrophobic compounds to plant roots. 3) Evaluation of device performance and degradation in different field soil conditions. Additional generated data will be used to formalize our US provisional patent applications into a formal PCT application.