Pioneering developments around Nygaia

About Nygaia

Nygaia is the latest high-tech substrate plug born from the partnership between Klasmann-Deilmann and Maan Biobased Products. It is made of partially biobased and fully biodegradable polymers. After use, the plug can be thrown in the green bin together with the plant residues. Because Nygaia is fully biodegradable. No harmful residues and waste remain, and it has no negative effect on compost quality. (Confirmed by TÜV AUSTRIA Belgium, through the OK Compost INDUSTRIAL certificate). In addition to the sustainable ingredients, the Nygaia concept aims to make cultivation as sustainable as possible. And the makers are developing automation to enable the substrate to be produced locally. And that now gets a follow-up...

Next level

What started as a dream is increasingly becoming a reality. Maan's engineers developed the Nygaia Plugline, which allows growers to produce their own substrate plug, on their own site. An entirely new decentralized substrate concept. Its unique advantage is that the plug can be completely customized to the grower's needs and produced on demand. This ensures that fewer container ships need to travel the world to meet substrate demand. And that leads to a significantly lower footprint.

During GreenTech, one of the modules will be on display live for the first time.

Nygaia in cultivation

Over the past year, the substrate plug was extensively tested in various crops. Besides lettuce, these include tomato, pak choi, basil, baby leaf, strawberry, spinach, rosemary, parsley, and rocket. This has - in addition to strikingly positive results - also provided new insights. With these, the developers have perfected the plug. They have paid very close attention to the plug's stability, for instance, and the intensive smell is now absent... Conclusion: the growing results are getting better and better and are more  consistent. Ready for the next phase.

Nominated for Concept Award

Promising, in other words. And that has not gone unnoticed. Nygaia was recently nominated for a GreenTech Concept Award. (The award for innovations that are not yet on the market but have everything it takes to be successfully introduced within two years). The substrate concept is a remarkable standout, among the data- and AI-driven technological feats presented by the other nominees. Yet Nygaia fits perfectly in a high-tech and controlled environment, according to its creators. It contains all the properties that Controlled Environment Agriculture demands of a substrate. It is inert; contains no nutritional value by itself, exerts no influence on pH or EC and is pathogen-free. ‘As a grower, it gives you full control over your own cultivation process’, says Tjeerd de Looze, Product Manager of Maan Biobased Products.

Future prospects

The makers see a bright future ahead. The demand for inert, renewable substrates is only increasing. With Nygaia, they hope to meet that demand in the foreseeable future. As early as this summer, production could be scaled up to commercial volumes and the first Nygaia plugline will be available for testing.

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