Background

The transition to a sustainable bioeconomy faces a critical challenge: sourcing feedstocks without competing for arable land needed for food production. This issue is particularly pressing in Europe, where around 80% of land is allocated to settlements, agricultural and forestry production, and infrastructure. The scarcity of land requires innovative approaches to feedstock cultivation. Degraded, polluted, and saline soils unsuitable for food crops offer a promising alternative for industrial crop cultivation. However, the widespread adoption of industrial crops on such soils is limited by several key challenges:

Understanding crop resilience: Determining how pollutants and salinity affect plant growth and yield is critical to promoting growth under stress conditions.
Pollutant dynamics: Tracking the dynamics of contaminants, including their accumulation in plant tissues and degradation pathways, is essential for safe application.
Feedstock valorisation: Optimising processes to take into account the quality of the feedstock and the risk of contamination remains a complex issue.
Acceptance and adaptation: Stakeholder and consumer acceptance of products from contaminated and saline soils is critical.

The pHYBi project tackles these challenges by monitoring, testing and optimising phytoremediation strategies to improve soil health while producing bio-based products for the textile industry. This approach supports the objectives of the EU Mission Soil and the CBE JU Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda, to promote the sustainable production of bio-based raw materials and the restoration of soil ecosystems.