Despite COVID 19 crisis LEX4BIO has achieved few significant results in 2020. However, COVID-19 related measures imposed by European governments prevented the smooth implementation of some of the key LEX4BIO activities such as field trials.
 
Mapping of NRSS and sourcing and evaluating available bio-based fertilisers (BBF) in the EU were the starting point for LEX4BIO activities. However, COVID-19 slowed down these activities from February 2020 onwards and lock-down in many EU member states practically stopped the activities in many partner´s organizations in spring 2020 and forced consortium to postpone the start of the planned field trials (WP3 and WP4) to spring 2021. Due to the delays caused by COVID-19, consortium prepared an amendment requesting to postpone LEX4BIO for 12 months.
 
National discussions organized mainly in the first project year provided the basis for developing a policy roadmap towards better utilization of BBFs across the EU and thus reducing the EU dependency on mineral fertilisers, providing tools for closing nutrient cycles and mitigating climate change. If you are interested engaging for the activities of LEX4BIO do not hesitate to contact us.
 
Below we have presented few achievements of LEX4BIO in the past 2020 year.

In WP3, phosphorus fertilisation value of broad range of bio-based fertilisers (BBF), covering organic, organo-mineral and mineral BBFs from 7 material categories, have been selected and distributed for testing in five field experiments from Finland to Spain. Together with these potential CE-marked BBFs tested in field scale, at least 25 other P-BBFs will be tested in pot experiments with different crops and soil types.
Two pot experiments conducted in 2020 indicated that several P-BBFs are comparable to common mineral P fertiliser, triple superphosphate. A screening of national fertiliser regulations with respect to total and soluble P requirements in fertilisers clearly showed the need to develop a unified approach for testing BBFs. A subset of soil samples from the LUCAS soil archive has been selected for optimum coverage of soil characteristics across the EU. Finally, preparations for an experiment to assess potential leaching of P after mixing BBFs with different soil types in Europe is under preparation for starting the experiment in 2021.