The European DeliSoil Project Present at the 2024 Researcher’s Night in Parma

Researchers’ Night is an initiative promoted by the European Commission since 2005 which involves thousands of researchers and research institutions in all European countries every year.

The objective is to create meeting opportunities between researchers and citizens to spread scientific culture and knowledge about research professions in an informal and stimulating context.

Events include live scientific experiments and demonstrations, exhibitions and guided tours, conferences and seminars, shows and concerts. Sustainability was an important topic of the Researchers’ Night and among our activities “The infinite life of objects and materials” underlined the importance of the reusing and recycling of objects and materials or employing by-products to produce fertilizers and soil improvers (such as biochar, a product obtained through oxygen-free combustion of biomasses) or ethanol, hyaluronic acid by fermentation of biomass. In this context it was introduced the European project DeliSoil (Delivering safe, sustainable, tailored and societally accepted soil improvers from circular food production processes for boosting soil health) that was illustrated with posters and leaflets and to children with funny activities, as measurement of soil pH with indicator strips, observation of soil microorganisms at microscope and determination of Tea Bags index. Tea bags, once buried on soil, undergo a loss of weight proportional to the activity of soil microorganisms. Some children of local schools measured the weight of the tea bags before and after two months of permanence in an experimental field of tomato transplanted in different conditions (biochars, microorganisms). In this way, the children had the opportunity to take on the role of scientist appreciating the microbial activity of different soils comparing the loss of tea bag weight.
The event achieved considerable success, in fact numerous attendances were recorded and several people showed interest in the activities of DeliSoil project and children learned in a funny way the basis of scientific method.

Dr. Caterina Agrimonti and Dr. Vittorio Scanferla (CINSA Team of DeliSoil), explaining goals to young students

A presence of the young students participating to DeliSoil experience