Some bacteria, such as Bacillus subtilis or B.licheniformis, carry out biochemical reactions that improve soil quality and promote plant growth, including crops. The project involves obtaining a prototype of an innovative eco-fertilizer based on a consortium of PGPR bacteria of the genus Bacillus. Selection of appropriate combination of strains enhancing synergistically the effect of secreted substances (on selected plants and some soil properties) will be carried out using the QSAR bioinformatic technique. In the short time allocated to the project, bioinformatic analyses of bacterial genomes for potentially growth-promoting substances are planned, followed by selection of a set of bacterial strains using bioinformatic tools. At the end of the project, biochemical and chemical analyses will be performed on selected products produced by the consortium and a biopreparation will be constructed, ready to be tested on an industrial scale. Interdisciplinary projects are those projects that draw on knowledge from two (or more), fields or scientific disciplines, can offer a new quality in the form of new knowledge or result (e.g. a patent, know-how), which would be impossible to achieve in the situation of using only the knowledge coming from one of the fields / disciplines.
The project combines as many as four scientific disciplines: Computer Science and Telecommunications (engineering and technical sciences field), Chemical Engineering (engineering and technical sciences field), Mathematics and Life Sciences (both science and life sciences field). The above activities will cause a significant increase in the innovativeness of the final results of the project, as they will firstly increase the dimension of its novelty (obtaining similar results would also require launching and successfully conducting an interdisciplinary project with an interdisciplinary team, in this case an expert team within the meaning of the four indicated scientific disciplines). In addition, these activities will affect the originality of the final results, because within single fields or disciplines, it is more difficult to obtain new knowledge than "at the junction" of different fields (disciplines).
At the end of the project, publication in a journal from the Philadelphia list (2022) and one patent application is expected. Conducting the project is possible thanks to the involvement of: Project Manager (Michał Piętal, PhD, WEiI, PRz), Scientific and Engineering Staff (Chemical Faculty of PRz), Scientific Staff of another university (Warsaw University of Life Sciences) moreover, Student (WEiI, WMiFS, WCh, competition pending as of 12 I 2022) and Scientific Staff of the Plant Protection Institute. Interdisciplinary team, certainly reduces the project risk (R&D project contains a lot of risk) and facilitates the work in such an interdisciplinary project. Moreover, part of the research work (creation of biopreparation, potting tests) will be outsourced to external entities, selected in a tender procedure.