Circular PhytoREVIER
Using the medicinal and healing plant arnica as an example, it will be investigated whether it can be cultivated as an arable plant in the Rhenish mining area.
About a quarter of the medicines prescribed worldwide are of plant origin. However, a large proportion of the medicinal plants processed do not come from field cultivation, but directly from wild harvesting. The required quantity and quality of plant material for further processing into active ingredients is therefore not guaranteed. Some wild plant species are already endangered in their natural populations.
The solution: more controlled cultivation on arable land in the open or in greenhouses. To achieve this, plants must be selected that, on the one hand, can cope with the growing conditions on local arable soils and, on the other, produce sufficient quantities of high-quality ingredients for the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries.
Cultivation trials at the AZUR innovation laboratory will show whether the plants produce valuable ingredients. Sensors are also being developed to detect which blossoms contain the most active ingredient. These flowers will then be harvested and processed particularly gently.
More information: BioökonomieREVIER Rheinland
