8 September 2023
From August 28 to September 1, 2023, the Dutch Wageningen University hosted the fifth edition of the Wageningen Soil Conference – an international scientific conference gathering an audience of mainly scientists but also subject matter experts from research institutes and Dutch government agencies.
LEX4BIO partner Dr. Boris Jansen, University of Amsterdam attended the event and presented work from work package 5 dedicated to the risk assessment of the application of biobased fertilizers (BBF). His presentation entitled “Advanced screening methods for potential soil pollution introduced via biobased fertilizers” featured results from the screening of 13 low-risk commercial BBFs for pollutants in two field trial soils, from Finland and Spain respectively, for pollution after BBFs application. The main pollutant classes under investigation were pharmaceuticals and pesticides, which screening poses a challenge due to the broad range of compounds given the wide array of BBF source materials, which in turn provide a complex range of organic matrices with which those compounds can interact.
In an attempt to overcome this, LEX4BIO partners developed an advanced screening method to simultaneously screen for a broad group of pharmaceuticals and pesticides in BBFs and soils, which was successfully applied through target analysis and suspect screening, to scan for more than 500 pharmaceuticals and pesticides total. The good news is that the results indicate a very limited presence of pollutants in the BBFs and soils.