Cereals

The UK Agri-Tech Centre has worked with agri-tech businesses to test and trial their technologies to address the challenges of water quality and management on-farm and across the agri-industry. Safe water production and protection are closely tied to soil health, which in turn underpins our food and energy systems. The UK Agri-Tech Centre has collaborated with a range of innovative partners on projects that address this challenge directly.Below are three initiatives working to safeguard and sustain safe water: STREAMS (Space Tech for River Environments & Agricultural Monitoring Sensors)Diffuse nutrient pollution remains one of the most significant pressures facing Welsh waterways, with well-known rivers such as the Teifi repeatedly falling short of phosphate standards. These pressures have lasting consequences for our landscapes, affecting biodiversity, land use and the long-term resilience of rural communities. Real-time water quality monitoring has the potential to speed up mitigation efforts, yet traditional sensors often carry prohibitive costs, and many rural locations lack the reliable connectivity required for automated data transfer. As a result, manual water sampling remains commonplace, which can miss short-term pollution spikes and delay timely intervention.The Innovate UK-funded STREAMS project aims to overcome these challenges, by making water-quality monitoring more affordable, reliable and continuous, even in the most remote areas of rural Wales. Project lead, Lacuna Space, is working with Aberystwyth University and the UK Agri-Tech Centre to combine three core innovations:A low-cost multiparameter sensor capable of measuring nitrates, phosphates, dissolved oxygen, pH and other key indicators of river healthLacuna’s LoneWhisper® satellite-IoT Technology, enabling sensors to transmit data without the need for network connectivityA bilingual Welsh–English dashboard, co-designed with end users, delivering clear, real-time insights for farmers, land managers, community groups and environmental professionalsWorking alongside local authorities, environmental regulators, regional communities and land users, the project will host bilingual workshops and engagement events to co-develop tools, evaluate sensor performance, refine the dashboard and ensure STREAMS delivers tangible value in practice. While STREAMS is grounded in Wales, the challenges it addresses are global: many water challenges are due to poor connectivity, making monitoring impossible.But Lacuna’s connectivity is making monitoring possible anywhere in the world and the team is already in conversation with partners as far afield as Brazil, exploring how the technology could support freshwater quality improvement on a global scale. By demonstrating the model locally first, Wales is establishing itself as a leader in satellite-enabled environmental monitoring and contributing to cleaner, healthier rivers for communities around the world. Interested in getting involved? Watch this space for updates on upcoming engagement events across the Ceredigion region. NURSE (Nutrient Utilisation and Recovery through Supercritical Extraction)The NURSE project is led by a consortium including Kairos Carbon Limited (lead), Cranfield University, Royal Agricultural University and the UK Agri-Tech Centre, forming part of Defra’s Farming Innovation Programme, delivered in partnership with Innovate UK. The project seeks to develop an advanced hydrothermal technology for processing livestock waste — recovering the valuable nutrients it contains, producing a carbon-negative, non-leaching fertiliser, and separating carbon for permanent sequestration.The UK generates around 140 million tonnes of livestock waste each year, the majority of which is spread directly onto farmland. By stripping out carbon prior to land application, the project aims to deliver meaningful emissions reductions. Currently, less than 50% of applied nutrients, such as phosphorus, are taken up by crops when livestock waste is used as fertiliser.At the same time, fertiliser costs for farmers continue to rise while key resources, including phosphorus, face long-term depletion. By developing a non-leaching fertiliser that enables greater nutrient uptake by plants, the project aims to help keep costs manageable for farmers while reducing resource waste. Equipping farmers with new tools to recover and reuse valuable nutrients while simultaneously reducing environmental impacts is central to the project’s mission.The technology delivers direct benefits by recovering critical materials from livestock waste in a concentrated form, for use as a low-leaching, sustainable fertiliser that can lower input costs and improve yields. It also enables more effective waste management and processing, the breakdown of organic pollutants, and the extraction of carbon for capture and storage all within an energy-neutral system. Kairos aims to reduce emissions from UK agriculture while preventing pollutants and nutrients from entering watercourses, and to tackle air pollution arising from livestock waste and other agricultural sources. NTPlus2The NTPlus and NTPlus2 projects are led by Agua DB, specialists in ion exchange technology, in collaboration with the UK Agri-Tech Centre. The goal is to develop a modular, integrated solution for recovering nutrients from wastewater and removing the technical barriers standing in the way of commercialisation. The NTPlus technology generates high-nitrate irrigation water, low-nitrate drinking water, and converts potash into sulphate of potash, boosting crop resilience against drought, stress, disease and pests.Agua DB’s approach targets the so-called ‘Nitrate Timebomb’ by capturing nitrates that would otherwise leach into aquifers, transforming them into a valuable input for farmers. This process enhances water quality while also supporting more efficient irrigation and greenhouse growing practices, making agriculture better equipped to withstand the effects of climate change.NTPlus2 builds on this foundation by extending the recovery process to include phosphates at wastewater treatment plants. It will also trial the novel application of plasma technology to break down persistent organics, including herbicides and pesticides, while generating additional green nitrate in the output. The project’s overarching aim is to optimise the recovery of nitrate and phosphate from wastewater treatment plants, improve sludge properties and produce a liquid fertiliser that will be demonstrated and validated through crop trials. This will support commercial adoption and integration into the liquid fertiliser supply chain.Rebecca Lewis, Head of Bid Development at the UK Agri-Tech Centre, said: “These projects show just some of the range of exciting innovations that are being developed to help deliver more resilient and healthy water systems. Technology can play a key role in securing a sustainable water resource for farms, ecosystems and communities.”For more information about the UK Agri-Tech Centre and the agri-tech businesses and projects we support, get in touch at [email protected].To explore how water innovation can be advanced further, visit Innovate UK’s Cross-Sector Water Innovation Network at https://iuk-business-connect.org.uk/programme/cross-sector-water-innovation-network/.

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