Partnering with Waitrose to use Welsh grasses for food packaging

Although CARIAD's focus is on food security, we are an integral part of WINR, the Welsh Institute for Natural Resources. One of our partner units in WINR is the BioComposites centre (BC), which focuses on “green chemistry” and bio-based alternatives to synthetic materials. They have just won funding to lead a project with the Institute of Biological Environmental and Rural Sciences (IBERS) at Aberystwyth University, and informed by industry partners including Waitrose, to use Welsh ryegrass to create sustainable products for the food packaging and cosmetics industries – the Sustainable Ryegrass Products (STARS) project.  STARS will see a biorefining process used to isolate and extract sugars and other components from ryegrass and convert them into low carbon products. These include biofuels, platform chemicals and pulp-moulded packaging products for retail applications such as food packaging.

Welsh ryegrass. Photo Dr Adam Charlton, WINR

Funding of almost £600,000 from the Welsh Government's Academic Expertise for Business (A4B) programme is supporting the project. A4B is a six-year, £70m programme of support aimed at unlocking the commercial potential of Wales' Higher and Further Education Institutions. Managed by the Welsh Government, and supported by EU convergence funding, it works closely with Wales' academic institutions, to help harness the knowledge, expertise and facilities that exist within academia and convert this into economic benefit for Wales. The Welsh Government is highly supportive of two Welsh institutions working with a wide range of partner businesses, both indigenous and multi-natonal, on a novel project with commercial potential.

The project will collaborate with six industrial partners representing all links in the SME supply chain - from biomass cultivation and harvesting to processing and commercial end-use - and will demonstrate the production of these materials at a pilot scale.

To inform the process, Waitrose will research public engagement in the bioeconomy and the adoption of green products. They see a natural synergy between this project and their own approach to “Treading Lightly” and reducing their environmental footprint. Waitrose are keen to move to easily recycled fibre-based packaging for foods, where this can show positive environmental benefit, and a key element of the project will be engaging with the public from an early stage to ensure they are delivering solutions that meet their needs. 

Pears packaged in new material developed from Welsh ryegrass. 

Photo: Waitrose

We believe the complementary expertise of the two Welsh universities and of the industrial partners will be the key to success. A key objective will be the creation of products with lower carbon output than those produced from oil. Activating a green industry in this way is a global aim, and we hope to demonstrate an integrated approach to land utilisation. We don't want to displace existing agricultural activity, but aim to provide farmers with an opportunity to diversify and find alternative applications for surplus grass produced in the UK. Through forging relationships with world-class organisations with significant market insight, the project offers a real possibility to commercialise a number of product streams from ryegrass.

The project will take previous research in this area to the next level, i.e. a demonstration at a commercially relevant scale using Bangor’s existing pilot-scale facilities in the BEACON project, and working with a supply chain to bring this concept to the public’s attention.

Helping Ethiopian researchers to improve food security

Tigray is the northernmost region of Ethiopia. It was the region worst affected by the famine of the 1980s, and frequently suffers severe droughts. It is home to almost 4.5 million people, 80% of whom live in rural areas and depend largely on subsistence agriculture. The traditional cereal crop is Tef or Teff (Eragrostis tef), a grass-like plant with small seeds which is used to make injera, a large flat round bread, but many other cereals, including wheat, are also grown. 

The location of Tigray in Ethiopia. Map: Wikipedia

Harvesting Teff in Northern Ethiopia. Photo: A Davey, licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

We worked with local partners there in a project funded by Irish Aid from 2007 to 2010 to achieve a breakthrough in increasing the food security of poor farmers in the region. Using the client-oriented methods pioneered by Prof John Witcombe, we identified two Indian wheat varieties, adapted to Ethiopian conditions, which give higher yields when rainfall is scarce. 

Working with Mekelle Agricultural Research Centre (MARC), and Tigray Agricultural Research Institute, Mekelle (TARI), local farmers made decisions about what elements of the different varieties were important to them.  This method is called is called participatory varietal selection or PVS, and CARIAD is a world-leading exponent of its use. Farmers often identify traits such as taste and quality, which are not tested for in traditional breeding programmes. PSV methods, which can be used anywhere, have already identified many farmer-preferred varieties of different crops. In India and Nepal, DFID-funded studies have shown that varieties of rice and maize identified using these methods have been widely adopted, leading to substantial improvements in the food security of resource-poor farming families. They are also highly effective in maintaining or even increasing on-farm biodiversity, as a wider range of crop varieties is grown, each occupying a specific niche in the cropping system.

PVS involves farmers in the research from the start, and is highly effective in identifying varieties suited to their needs and preferences, particularly in drought-affected or infertile areas. Farmers work with CARIAD and local partners to identify new varieties that suit their particular needs for yield, flavour and time to maturity. These are then widely distributed through farmer-to-farmer contact, and community-based systems can be set up to provide enough good quality seed to farmers.

Here, the two varieties were tested against a locally-recommended check variety, HAR 2501, by 32 farmers at different locations in Tigray during 2008 and 2009. The variety HI-1418 produced 2.3 t ha^-1 grain, and HUW-468 2.5 t ha^-1, compared with 2.0 t ha^-1 for the check, increases of 15 and 25%. Because they mature around 2 weeks earlier than the check variety, the new varieties are much more drought tolerant, especially at the critical pre-harvest period. They also have good straw production, do not lodge (fall over), and have high disease resistance and good cooking quality. The grains of both varieties are hard, large and amber coloured, all traits that farmers prefer.

Project staff and farmers in Mekelle inspecting the new varieties. Photo: DS Virk

The two farmer-preferred varieties will provide food for many hungry people in Ethiopia. Before the project, farmers in the region preferred traditional low-yielding varieties, as the locally-recommended modern varieties were too late to mature. However, during the testing, the farmers overwhelmingly preferred the new varieties, over both the traditional and the modern varieties, and were keen to grow them again if seed were available.

The proposal by TARI to release the varieties nationally for cultivation in drought prone areas was accepted by the Ethiopian National Variety Release Committee in February 2011. According to Dr Eyasu of the Mekelle Agricultural Research Centre (MARC), they are “the first varieties ever released by MARC and TARI, and this would not have possible without the help of CARIAD.”

TARI now plans a major programme of seed production and will disseminate these varieties widely in rainfed, drought-affected areas. They will benefit over 350,000 households on the 210,000 ha in Tigray and the Southern regions where wheat is grown.

The selected varieties have also been tested in Southern Ethiopia as part of the same project. Dr Virk had initially identified them in a PVS project in Gujarat, India, funded by the DFID Plant Sciences Research Programme from 1996 to 2002 and managed by Bangor University. 

Quinoa - salvation or disaster for Andean farmers

We recently attended a conference organised by the Desert Restoration Hub, held at Greenwich University in London. From a very interesting programme, one talk in particular, from James Reynolds of Duke University, stood out. It was particularly timely as the UN has decreed 2013 to be the “Year of Quinoa.

The location of the Altiplano in the central Andes. Map: Wikimedia commons

Reynolds had been working close to Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, an area of salt flats on the altiplano or Andean Plateau, the cool, dry plain high in the central Andes, lying at an altitude of 3-5,000 m. The traditional local crop is quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa), a pseudo-cereal which has been grown there for thousands of years. In Inca times it was felt to be a sacred plant. It was so highly regarded that the emperor himself sowed the first seeds of the season, using “golden implements”, and the Spanish Conquistadors banned its cultivation for a period. For the pre-Andean civilisations, Quinoa was valued ahead of maize, and second only to the potato. 

Aerial view of the arid Altiplano between Sicuani (Cusco) and Ayaviri (Puno), Peru. The altitude here is about 3900 m. Photo: Maurice Chédel

 

Quinoa is well suited to cool, dry environments on poor soils, although it does need well-distributed rainfall during establishment. It will grow well on salt-affected land, and is perfectly at home at high altitudes. It is related to the widespread temperate weed known in the UK as Fat Hen (C. album) which is sometimes cultivated as a vegetable, and to other pseudo-cereals such as grain amaranth that are grown in other parts of the world, for example the Himalayas. A shrub that can grow to more than 2 m high, in flower and at harvest quinoa brings vibrant colours to the otherwise monotone semi-desert. 

Quinoa plants near Cachora, Apurímac, Peru. Altitude: 3800m. Photo: Maurice Chédel

 Quinoa has a very good nutrient composition compared with most cereals. The grains contain all ten essential amino acids, high fibre, and high concentrations of minerals such as calcium, phosphorus, magnesium and iron. Over the centuries, local farmers have kept and sown their own seed. As quinoa becomes adapted to particular micro-environments, the area where it grows shows very high biodiversity, and there are a great many landraces each adapted to its own particular environmental niche.

Traditionally, the crop has been grown for subsistence, and farmers have largely cooperated with such things as land preparation and harvest. Although it responds to fertilizer, traditionally little or none has been applied. However, in recent years increasing realisation of the health benefits of the grain has led to very high commercial demand from, for example, the US, Europe and Australia.

This has had a number of undesirable consequences. The high demand has led to a tripling in prices to, for some varieties, USD 8,000 per tonne, which has fuelled an increase in the area of the crop. The increased prices have led to increased mechanisation, and to the crop spreading to increasingly marginal land which is damaged by the cultivation operations.  This is leading in some cases to increased erosion. The high prices also mean that local farmers are more likely to sell their harvest, rather than using it to supplement diets that are otherwise energy-rich but nutrient-poor, and that poor people in towns and cities can no longer afford it. Increased wealth also means that sales of “junk” food and drink are increasing among the farmers, and obesity is rising as a result.

Similarly, changes in culture and social behaviour are becoming apparent. For example, farmers are apparently now far less likely to cooperate with each other than previously, and there have even been reports of conflict over quinoa-growing land.

What does this all tell us? Clearly, we need to help smallholder farmers increase their production and yields, but this has to be done in a sustainable way. If a price boom leads to unsustainable production practices then many problems can result.

More on this story is available on the Guardian and, more controversially, also on their blog at http://bit.ly/WcbUTF