Proposed Implementation

Introduction

Climate change is induced by humans and is causing dangerous disruption in nature as well as affecting the lives of billions of people worldwide. The effects of climate change are already evident with some examples being: heatwaves, floods, droughts, animal and plant extinction, loss of biodiversity and destruction of ecosystems. One major problem is overpopulation that leads to overconsumption. In other words, the larger the population, the far more raw materials are required to sustain it. Also, keeping up with consumers' evolving preferences and expectations for safer, higher-quality products without using harmful or unnecessary fertilizers, is another challenge for farmers. Food security is threatened by the inadequate response to climate change and biodiversity loss in recent decades, which have weakened the earth's natural systems. Farmers must remain resilient in the face of global economic factors. The lack of critical data regarding the physical and chemical qualities of the soil in large and isolated locations is also a major influencing factor that makes the current agricultural approaches regarding soil enrichment inadequate. The inefficiency of crop inputs such as fertilizers, tillage, pesticides, plus irrigation water seems to be a major issue in the agricultural field. Pesticides and other chemicals commonly used to enhance crop development also pollute the environment. Many other problems related to agriculture in this way remain to be solved and require immediate action. There is a crucial need to achieve climate stability and sustainable agriculture in order to ensure an optimal future for people and nature.

Our end users

PAGGAIA is a project with the aim of revolutionizing the agricultural process.

Our team recognizes that new ventures in bio-refining require technical excellence grounded in economic realities. We seek to serve as management consultants to those individuals and companies that intend to lead the bio-industry. The expected customer base includes emerging industrial-biotechnology firms, large existing agricultural farms and utilities, agricultural operations, and of course, farmers individually.

We will help our clients realize they can enhance their crops at a lower cost and/or in less time than they could do alone - with a guarantee of a top-quality, professional service. They can save time and money by optimizing the use of resources such as water, fertilizers, pesticides, etc., and finally, they can do it from anywhere in the world. With our assistance, our clients will also achieve sustainability from the perspective of the triple bottom lines - economic, environmental, and social responsibilities in all their business activities.

Applications Inside and Outside the Lab

Farmers that want to enhance the soil qualities of their plantations or cultivation fields can contact our company. We will work with our clients to ensure that the major biomass fractions and minor components that can be functionalized into high-value specialized products are utilized economically. The evaluation of the soil conditions in the field, in real-time, using a package that comprises sampling analysis (by hand/with aerotransportable devices) and data assessment using our algorithm are the two main parts of our business proposal. The utilization of GMOs to enhance soil biodiversity and nutritional quality is the third element of our business proposal. As a standalone business idea, the third component is not included in our business plan.

Safety Considerations

Throughout our project, we contacted farmers and experts of the agricultural field and received important feedback, in regards to the application of our project in the real world. Therefore, we gained insight on certain safety issues that we have to take into consideration for the implementation of our project. Firstly, it is important for the end user to have the required training and knowledge on the regulations, regarding safe drone flying procedures. Also, we understood that we need to help farmers familiarize themselves with this new approach, that contains techniques outside of their area of expertise. For this purpose, we created a handbook in collaboration with 2022 iGEM teams Aboa and TecCEM, which we think is essential to be distributed to all end users of our service, as it contains important information, written in a beginner friendly manner. Apart from that, it would be really beneficial for our team to continue with the approach of farmers associations, companies and any interested individual, in order to communicate our project properly and help educate on the technologies used.

Future Challenges

Although we are very confident about the quality and the outcome of our products and services as well as the future implementations of our project, there are obstacles that we need to overcome to take advantage of its full potential. While PAGGAIA opens up new roads to agricultural practices, our self-learning algorithm requires more data to be properly trained, something that we didn't have at our disposal during the course of this project. Moreover, we need more data samples to make sure that our software is working efficiently and with the predicted speed and precision. In addition, we need to ensure that our software is unbreachable and thus guarantees the protection of data collected from our customers.

Conclusion

Here we present to you, the business plan created for our project PAGGAIA.