BE-Basic Symposium BE-Basic and Soil Health Kees van Gestel Department of Ecological Science, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam

BE-Basic Biotechnology based Ecologically Balanced Sustainable Industrial Consortium International public-private partnership between universities, research institutes and industries of various scales in field of sustainable chemistry and ecology. Funded by Dutch government, Mission of BE-Basic is to develop industrial bio-based solutions for a sustainable society.

BE-Basic: chemical factory of the future Old chemicals factory  relies on environment to process toxic waste Chemical factory of the future  incorporates all monitoring, detoxification and waste treatment processes to achieve zero emission situation

BE-Basic Flagships 1.Carbon-based compounds 2.Nitrogen-based specialties 3.Sustainable soil management and upstream processing 6.Synthetic Biology 7.High-throughput experimentation and (meta)genomic mining 8.Environmental impact of chemical, bio-based molecules and processes 9.Societal embedding of a bio-based economy 10.Genomics for Industrial Fermentation 11.EBD Programme: Economy, Policy and Sustainability 12.Iso-butanol Platform Rotterdam (IBPR)

Pre-treatment and utilization of biomass to produce commodity chemicals (schematic; BE-Basic Flagship 1) * Soil health issue of concern for - Clean biomass production - Recycling of (waste) materials  sustainable soil use/circular economy * * *

U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1937): “A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself.” The need for sustainable soil use (Wall & Six, 2015)

Conflict between land use and ecosystems (Setälä et al., 2014) Growth of human population + increased resource consumption  increased demand for urban and agricultural land  conflicts in land use between and within urban, agricultural and natural ecosystems.  trade-offs within system Solving “local” conflicts  transferring problems to other ecosystems  conflicts become even worse.

Threats to soil biodiversity and ecosystem services by agricultural and urban land use (Setälä et al., 2014)

Effects of land-use intensification (Tsiafouli et al. 2015) Increasing land-use intensity reduced complexity of soil food webs community-weighted mean body mass of soil fauna species richness of earthworms, Collembolans, oribatid mites taxonomic distinctness (measure of taxonomic relatedness of species in a community) Overall effects of land-use intensification: soil food webs less diverse, composed of smaller organisms. fewer functional groups of soil biota with fewer and taxonomically more closely related species

Wall et al., 2015

Nine planetary boundaries, three main forms Defining safe global level of depleting non-renewable fossil resources, such as energy and groundwater; Defining safe global level of using the living biosphere, including exploitation of ecosystems, protection of biodiversity and consuming renewable resources; Providing safe global level of Earth’s capacity to absorb and dissipate human waste flows, including carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and toxic chemicals.

Planetary boundaries (Rockström et al., 2009)

Focus on complex mixtures and biomass, from contaminated soils*, or associated with accumulation of pollutants due to extensive concentration and recycling processes Also attention to potential toxic by-products generated within production chains Strategies for risk reduction and optimized land & biomass use  BE-Basic Flagship 8 projects *See poster TH009

BE-Basic project: dRISK – Problem + Aim Current risk assessment approach  chemical analysis  insight into presence of selected chemicals Toxicity data available for single chemicals –But not for (unknown) chemicals in bio-based processes –Not suitable for assessing risk of complex mixtures of chemicals Aim  Develop tools for cost-effective effect-based screening / monitoring of bio-based production processes and resulting waste materials and residues (also applicable to other wastes)

Proposed stepwise approach to effect-based safety assessment of biomass materials Substrate Step 1 Screening/ worst case  Total extracts - dilution series  Selected fast and sensitive bioassays Step 2 More realistic assessment  Available fraction - passive sampling  Short-term tests  Test selection  outcome step 1 Step 3 Refined assessment  Gene expression  critical pathways  Long-term tests  realistic exposures  EDA  identify critical compounds Step 4 Comparative genomics and AOP  Organisms at risk  Options for risk reduction Step 5 Further targeted testing  Field monitoring  Risk reduction measures  Etc. See poster TH081

Chemistry TRIAD for risk assessment of polluted sites:  Method to reduce uncertainty through combination of chemical analytics, bioassays and ecological field studies Link with chemical(s) causing effect not always clear:  Use Folsomia candida transcriptomics tools to better link biology and chemistry Transcriptomics-enhanced analysis of soil ecotox using Folsomia candida gene expression profiles Ecology Toxicology

Sample of suspect soil Comparison to database (reference) Exposing indicator organism to soil sample Gene expression profiles Soil classification, certification Diagnosis of pollution Evaluation of bioavailability Mechanistic information Xbase Transcriptional response Cell Damage Signal transduction Organism Sense organs CNS Hormones Toxic component Toxicity

Application to Dommel floodplain soils (Chen, 2016) 28-d reproduction test; Lufa 2.2 soil as control and for diluting soils Sterilized Non-sterilized  biological factor caused toxicity  least contaminated soil most toxic

Ecotoxicogenomic tool distinguished pollution types Reproduction Cell redox homeostasis Metal polluted soils Reproduction Microtubule development Biostress soil

Conclusions Sustainable bio-based production should take into account planetary boundaries and requirements of circular economy Sustainable land use not only essential for bio-based production but also for human health Tools needed for assessing potential threats of (mixtures of) pollutants entering or produced in bio-based process chains Combinations of tools needed for assessing steps in bio-based processes, to assess soil quality and to identify chemicals of concern; ecotoxicogenomics tools may provide useful info