Team:UFRGS Brazil
Water is essential to all life as we know it. This year we already consumed more than 3 trillion cubic meters of freshwater. However, this indispensable resource is now threatened.
Pesticides are largely used to produce high crop outputs and they are accumulating in our superficial waters. While agriculture boosts global economy and provides food for the world, have you thought about the consequences of pesticide use?
The most common active compound in pesticides used globally is glyphosate. Over 170,000 tons are used annually in Brazil, the country with 12% of all available fresh water in the world, and the excess of these pesticides leaches to rivers and lakes.
This compound can cause mutations in fish, super reproduction of snails and damage to plants. The effects of its chronic exposure to human health are still unknown.
To lessen its harmful effects to nature and provide safer waters for the living, we present the inventive biofiltering system:
Glyfloat explores the potential of bacterial metabolism to degrade phosphorus organic compounds, such as glyphosate, by enhancing the production of proteins involved in its uptake and assimilation.
Also its innovative design and mechanics were carefully built to maintain bacteria trapped, guaranteeing higher surface contact enabling high degradation rates and preventing GMO escape to surroundings.
With this filter, our aim is not to stop the glyphosate usage. We only want to keep it away from where it shouldn’t be and should never have been.
