PFS
Scheda del progetto
Università degli Studi di Torino
Prof.ssa Associata Francesca Secchi
Through the 2i3T incubator, a business acceleration process has been launched for the foundation of a university spin-off offering an innovative service for the automatic measurement of the gaseous exchange of water vapour and carbon dioxide between plant and atmosphere (Plant Flow Solutions, PFS). The PoC aims to support a project that will enable a technological advancement capable of redefining the applicability of these measurements, giving them all the characteristics of modern phenotyping systems, which will support the scientific basis of the nascent university spin-off.
The project will analyse the entire life cycle of contrast agents, from raw materials to production, clinical use, waste management and excretion products, and assess their environmental impact. In addition, the project will examine the efficacy, technical feasibility, maturity and sustainability of technologies to minimise their dispersion in water, in order to develop environmentally friendly solutions for diagnostic medicine.
The platform realised, tested and calibrated on pot-grown plants, however, has modular and scalable analysis logic that will be developed, and can be exploited transversally in industrial and urban settings, not only on plants, but also on artificial air flow systems containing gradients of water, carbon and other gases of interest.
The applicability of our technology, which starts from an advanced state of prototyping developed by Lovisolo group (Patono D.L. et al. Plant J 2022, Plant Sci 2023), will involve all those areas of Green Technologies that need to define the performance of a gas exchanger. In particular, it will be possible to test the effectiveness of innovative and flexible Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and Air Rimediation technologies from inorganic pollutants and volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
Thanks to the technology transfer that will take place with the university spin-off, a business model will be developed that will exploit the analysis platform to offer measurement packages for Agritech research companies, such as the biostimulant, seed, breeding and controlled environment industries such as vertical farming and high-tech greenhouses.