Carp, river crab, lettuce, basil and tomato plants.They are the first "tenants" of the Cell of Life (officially "CEllule technologique de LA VIE"), the innovative experimental, technological and transportable nursery unveiled this afternoon in Palermo by the partnership that conceived and built it through the Celavie project, funded by the European Union within the ENI Italy-Tunisia 2014-2020 cross-border cooperation program, of which the Presidency of the Sicilian Region - Department of Planning is the managing authority.A prototype capable of simultaneously supplying vegetables and fish or crustaceans for both food and other purposes with production cycles with almost zero environmental impact, and to do so anywhere because it is transportable, self-sufficient from an energy point of view, equipped with an autonomous internal microclimate and also of advanced control electronics for remote management and monitoring.Celavie is a project implemented by CORERAS - Regional Consortium for Applied Research and Experimentation (lead body) together with the Université de Sfax, the National Research Council - CNR (present with its IAS, IBBR and ISMed institutes), the Green Future srl, the Tunisian Union of agriculture et de la pêche - UTAP and the Association de la continuuité des générations - AGC.The overall budget is € 975,688, of which 10% financed by the project partners with their own resources.Associated partners are the LAG Elimos, the Agricultural Development Agency - ESA, the Association for the conservation of biodiversity in the golf courses of Gabès and the Regional Union of agriculture and pêche.Working group present in full force today for the inauguration, including the representatives of Tunisian partner organizations who arrived in Palermo for the occasion: Amine Elleuch, Slim Kallel, Ahmed Ben Arab and Ahmed Hadjkcem for the University of Sfax, Fatma Amdouni for the UTAP and Ismal Bouassida for the AGC.The Cell of Life, which is now active for experimentation at the Green Future headquarters and which will be replicated in the university campus in Sfax, looks at a wide variety of applications, from food to those in the commercial, environmental and social fields.The first are expected to be within projects involving large international groups."We will insert the Cell of Life in the agrovoltaic plants that we are about to build in several areas of Sicily for a total of 300 megawatts - explains Giuseppe Filiberto, director of Green Future - and the use of the prototype will be a huge advantage because it will allow continuous production of seedlings to be then allocated to the land between the photovoltaic modules.This innovative and completely new component for plants of this type reinforces the idea that quality agrovoltaics is possible.The projects, awaiting administrative approval, concern, among other things, some areas in the provinces of Palermo, Trapani, Enna and Ragusa, and arise from contracts already stipulated with large multinational companies.Among these is also a pharmaceutical giant: in this specific case, the Cell of Life will be important precisely for the production of medicinal herbs for medical use ".The Celavie cooperation area embraces cross-border territories on the two shores of the Mediterranean and, in particular, the project will be developed in Sicily in the provinces of Trapani and Palermo and in Tunisia in the governorates of Sfax and Kairouan."With the Cell of Life, experimenting with innovations both in terms of products and methods to minimize the environmental impact of production processes - comments Gianfranco Badami, president of Coreras - the partnership of the Celavie project outlines a new model that, in the long term, may influence among other things, the orientation of agricultural production in areas that are little used today, meeting the food needs of the populations and, consequently, also directing internal economic policies.In terms of sustainability, the water savings of over 90% that the Cell guarantees are emblematic.I believe this project, for the contents and the quality of the partnership, is particularly important not only for Coreras but also for the Regional Department of Agriculture.The design group, a highly qualified collective, includes internal resources, consultants, researchers, public and private partners from Sicily, Tunisia and other countries.The final utility of the project, beyond the experimental one, also lies in understanding how the two shores of the Mediterranean can collaborate, in testing common research practices between companies and institutions, in creating the conditions for future joint consortia.Celavie's is, therefore, a socio-economic experimentation as well as a scientific one ".“Celavie is an innovative project - underlines Amine Elleuch, coordinator of Celavie's partners in Tunisia - which can meet the expectations of the population, farmers and scientists.The long-term objective is to contribute to feeding the population with vegetables and fish, using innovative technologies for vegetable and fish production on small surfaces and minimizing the pollution that could derive from the energy needs necessary for the functioning of the system.The latter, in fact, is autonomous and runs essentially on solar energy.Scientists, together with professionals, will have to find solutions to all problems so that the system is functional and optimized before the end of the project, the success of which, however, cannot be separated from the contribution of civil society to the dissemination of activities and results among the citizens".The structure, a prefabricated and air-conditioned capsule of about 6 and 3 meters high, over 2 and a half meters high, with a soilless "closed circuit" system inside for both vegetable and aquatic production, integrates the ancient methodology of aquaponics with technological equipment for the management and monitoring, even remotely, of biological cycles in all their aspects.Below are the tanks for aquatic organisms: the experimentation includes both crustaceans and fish. In the vertical terraced farm above, special LED lights will simulate photoperiods for the growth of seedlings, effectively mimicking the seasons.The possible alternations of crops, both vegetable and aquatic, and the correlation of the Cell with the external environment will be studied, thanks to a sophisticated control and monitoring system of environmental parameters and energy flows.The device has almost zero environmental impact, because it is able to self-produce the energy necessary for its operation from renewable sources and because aquaponics, in addition to minimizing the consumption of water and soil, do not require the use of pesticides.Being completely autonomous and lending itself to any configuration, the Cell of Life can be installed and put into operation in any place and environmental context, possibly by placing several modules side by side and with the possibility of flexibly adapting the type and quantity of productions to the specifications. needs to be met.The Cell of Life looks to a wide variety of applications.It can be used as a source of food at zero kilometers for small communities in areas difficult to supply, or where water resources, arable land and means are scarce, or to support agricultural or aquaculture activities, or for the repopulation of reservoirs, for example those used for sport fishing, or in situations of extreme emergency, for example isolated countries due to landslides or earthquakes, and then also for educational purposes.The Celavie module can therefore be suitable for a company that carries out cultivation or breeding activities, a small municipality, a single consumer, or groups of workers engaged in remote areas, but it can also be used for humanitarian purposes, for example for offer food support to people living in refugee camps.Celavie explores the future scenario of a world population close to 9 billion people by 2050 with an increasingly reduced availability of fertile soils, a condition that will require the transition from intensive production systems to conservation techniques capable of optimizing the use of resources for make production processes efficient and sustainable.It is the scenario of the transition to the circular economy, and aquaponics is considered one of the most promising solutions.It is a “closed circuit” soilless production system that combines aquatic and vegetable crops.Schematically, the waste water from the breeding tanks irrigates special growth beds free of soil and fertilizer, with only inert materials on which the seedlings take root.The role of bacterial populations present in the growth beds, which transform waste substances from animal metabolism into nutrients, which are then absorbed by the roots of plants, is decisive.The unifying factor is therefore the water used for the growth of aquatic organisms, first filtered to remove solid elements and to convert ammonia into nitrates and then recycled as a nutrient solution for the cultivation of vegetable species in hydroponics.Plants perform an additional filtering action by absorbing nitrates through the roots and using them as a source of nitrogen.The water treated in a natural way returns purified in the tanks for a new cycle, and in this way it is possible to obtain two productions, fish and vegetable, using a fixed quantity of water (only the small amounts evaporated need to be replenished).The ecological advantages are important: aquaponics minimizes water consumption (water savings over 90%), the quantity of wastewater released into the environment and the use of chemical substances for plant nutrition, reduces the use of soil and it does not require pesticides.All this also translates into lower production costs."First evidence of aquaponic crops perhaps dates back to the Aztecs, and it is certainly a very ancient tradition in eastern countries, for example in Vietnam and on inhabited platforms along rivers, but we work on a particular technological version: innovation lies in enclosing everything in a confined, automated and transportable system ".Thus Salvatore Di Cristofalo, technical coordinator of the project and energy manager of the CNR, summarizes the meaning of the experimentation carried out by the Celavie partnership.The Cell of Life, for the realization of which we availed ourselves of the specialist expertise of Green Future, is a monobloc structure with an external casing in insulated steel of about 6 meters by 3, with a total volume of about 30 cubic meters.Transportable both by rail and by road, the module is equipped with a “stand alone” photovoltaic system, ie with its own storage batteries, capable of self-producing all the energy necessary for the system to function.Inside there are the tanks for the breeding of fish species, the hydraulic system for water recycling and, for the vegetables, a "vertical farm" with terraces arranged on several levels above the tanks themselves.LED lights illuminate the seedlings by simulating specific photoperiods to favor their growth in the fastest possible time.An air conditioning system allows you to create a microclimatic system that is insensitive to external environmental conditions, configured according to the type of crop to be grown.Among the technological equipment there is also the monitoring apparatus thanks to which it is possible to control, both on site and remotely, all the parameters: the vital ones of the crops, the energy ones of production and consumption, the internal temperature and humidity, the water, its acidity, conductivity, dissolved oxygen and redox trend.The external microclimatic parameters will also be measured to study the correlation with the environment, given that the Cell of Life is born to be installed in any environmental context, in hot areas as in cold areas, in the desert as in the high mountains.The versatility of the Life Cell, also due to its ability to maintain an internal microclimate that is “impermeable” to external conditions, offers many options in the choice of crops.The possibility of alternating them is precisely between the aspects at the center of the study.“The development of living organisms - explains Angela Cuttitta of ISMed CNR, scientific director of Celavie - is a very delicate phase as the life and reproductive cycles of living organisms are always quite critical.For this reason we have decided to experiment in the cell with robust species, with a short reproductive cycle, very fertile and whose breeding has both edible and ecological values.Then, in order to test the growth performance, the river crab Potamon fluviatile, the carp Cyprinus carpio, the goldfish Carassius auratus and the gambusia Gambusia affinis were chosen for the Italian cell.The carp and the river crab, as well as having an interest in food, such as gambusia, are species with an ecological value as they are threatened by pollution.Their insertion in the cell therefore opens up new scenarios for their possible use in the repopulation of Sicilian inland waters.The choice of inserting the goldfish is mainly oriented to ornamental use.For the cell to be built in Tunisia, the evaluation is underway and, probably, a fish species will be chosen ".There are also many options for vegetable crops.Inside the Cell of Life it is in fact possible to mimic the seasons at will, and therefore future users of the device will be able to choose based on production or food needs.In the prototype inaugurated in Palermo, the vertical farm houses tomato and chilli plants as well as lettuce and basil, but it is possible to range with other vegetables or aromatic essences, for example barley, and with fruit plants (strawberries, for example), also growing several species in different sections at the same time.Types and quantities produced can also be calibrated on the basis of two other variables: the fact that for some plant species even more cycles are possible in the course of a year and then the modularity of the Life Cell, because the aquaponic system can be extended based on to the need by placing more monobloc capsules side by side.“In this transportable and versatile nursery - explains Dario Costanzo, coordinator of Celavie - the surface can also be exploited vertically, thus multiplying the production pallets.The production of young seedlings tends to be optimal, which can then be supplied to agricultural businesses or individual consumers and which will complete the vegetative cycle on land, but it is also possible to reach the adult plant directly by modifying the internal layout of the cell, with caissons instead of drawers. .In this second hypothesis, the quantities produced are obviously lower than in the first configuration, but in perspective these are choices based on the cost-opportunity calculation, also due to the places where the Life Cell can be used ".Your email address will not be published.Required fields are marked *I give my consent for a cookie to save my data (name, email, 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