Non-food applications. Yellow Gold: Innovative systems for - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

‘Yellow Gold’: Innovative systems for sustainable daffodil-derived galanthamine production in the uplands.

A collaboration between: Engineering Department, Harper Adams University, Newport, Shropshire. Agroceutical Products Ltd, Powys. Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences, Aberystwyth University.

Agri-Tech Catalyst – Innovate UK. Industrial Research – Crops: Non-food applications.

Alzheimer’s disease

• Sufferers of Alzheimer’s disease accounts for

up to 75% of all cases of dementia.

• Since 1998, Galantamine has been an

approved treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.

• Galantamine can be synthesised, but is

difficult to do and is expensive.

• Galantamine can be produced relatively

cheaply from galanthamine, a similar chemical found naturally occurring in plants, such as daffodils.

• Daffodils are grown commercially in the UK

and across Europe in lowland areas, but the levels of galanthamine in the plants is minute.

• However, previous research that Agroceutical

Products Ltd (AP) had been involved with had shown that growing daffodils at altitudes above 305m (1000ft) somehow ‘stressed’ the plants such that the levels of galanthamine increased significantly.

• Therefore, growing daffodils in the uplands

might offer hill farmers a novel, high value crop that could provide them with a new income stream.

• Hence ‘Yellow Gold’!

Why ‘Yellow Gold’?

(See http://www.agroceutical.com/)

Agroceutical Products (AP) was formed in around 2004 and is at the forefront in the production of sustainable quantities of naturally derived galanthamine. Agroceutical Products' work on the production

• f galanthamine from daffodils grown in Wales

was featured in the BBC's Countryfile program that was broadcast in April 2011.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoGhqYN68i8

Introduction – Who are AP?

• Soon after the Countryfile programme was

broadcast, AP approached the engineering department at HAU. They felt they would need the skills of agricultural engineers in the next stage of their daffodil project in the Welsh uplands.

• The daffodils shown in the Countryfile video were

planted using traditional cultivation methods.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfikvFEVvG4
• Clearly these methods were likely to be

inappropriate in the Welsh uplands, due to potential erosion of the thin, stony soils resulting in possible pollution and eutrophication of watercourses, as well as damaging the ground by using large, heavy machinery.

Why Harper Adams engineers are involved in this project?

Project establishment.

• Therefore, the ‘new’ project would integrate daffodil

growing into permanent upland sheep pasture with the aim of increasing both the production of galanthamine and the economic sustainability of hill farming.

• From the initial meeting between AP and HAU, it

took 2 years and several meetings and discussions with both AP and AU to finalise the detailed aims and objectives of the project.

• An application for funding was submitted to

Innovate UK, through the Agri-tech Catalyst project call - Crops: non-food applications.

• Funding was awarded to the project partners early

in 2015.

• The project ‘officially’ started on 1st March 2015.

Project plans and funding

• This is a 56 month project with 8 work packages.
• The project value awarded to the partners is:-

Agroceutical Products = £670,272 Aberystwyth University = £446,832 HAU Engineer Dept. = £222,687 Project Total = £1,339,791

• HAU engineers were tasked with designing,

developing, testing and evaluating appropriate planting and harvesting equipment (WP1).

• A planting machine was required by October 2015

to plant the first trial plots, at Pwllpeiran Farm.

Yellow Gold – overall structure and work packages

Work package 1 Planting and Harvesting machinery Work package 2 Establishment Work package 3 Herbage yields Work package 4 Stock performance Work package 5 Fertiliser inputs Work package 6 Annual harvests WP’s 7 & 8 Juice extraction & processing and business development

• We needed to develop a system for planting

daffodils under permanent pasture, thereby protecting the pasture and allowing sheep to continue to graze.

• Our starting point was to evaluate the ground

conditions of the designated trial plots.

• The project trial plots are hosted by

Aberystwyth University at their Upland Research Centre, Pwllpeiran.

• Pwllpeiran Farm is a former MAFF

Experimental Husbandry Farm.

• The project plots range between 320m and

400m.

Project site

The trial plots

• HAU assessed:

– the soils and slope of the plots. – size and quantities of the bulbs to be planted. – commercially available bulb planters and, in particular, any ‘under turf planters’. – the availability of front disc and winged tine combinations that would be appropriate for use on the HAU planter. – What sort of vehicle would be needed to pull the planter?

Equipment for amenity planting bulbs under turf are available for hire from bulb suppliers, but to purchase one of these machines would be expensive, especially if designed for the upland conditions we were likely to encounter. (The machine on the left/below is made in the Netherlands and the machine on the right is available in New Zealand).

Commercially available planters

Vehicle selection

Would a utility vehicle or a quad bike be appropriate? Or perhaps a small tractor? What are the farmers most likely to have available? Eventually a 55 kW tractor was chosen to pull both the planter and harvester.

HAU planter design

The ultimate aim for the planter was to be one man operation, as far as possible, and initially it would be required to plant size 10/12 bulbs at 4t/ha on the 2015 trial plots.

Daffodil bulb sizes.

HAU planter design

• HAU purchased a second hand, lowland

planter and modified it to suit the arduous conditions we would encounter.

• Having stripped unwanted bits from the

planter, we purchased a suitable tine and fixed it onto the planter chassis.

• The tine was adapted, with wings, to open

the turf to allow the bulbs to be deposited under the turf with minimal soil disturbance before bei pressed back in place.

Original planter – before modification

Winged tine turf opener. Claydon disc and tine assembly.

Planter Mk.1 – 2015

2015 plots 2016 plots

Planter Mk1 evaluation.

Planter Mk1 was not the ‘finished’ item, but was a reasonable starting point from where we could evaluate the performance of the tine and configuration of the machine in the uplands. Areas needing further attention:

• Operator access to the hopper when lifting and

loading 25kg bags of bulbs into the hopper.

• Addition of another tine for two row planting.
• Design of the drop chute that would be flexible

enough to withstand the movement of the tine while allowing unrestricted delivery of the bulbs.

• The relatively smooth nature of the hopper

delivery belt meant that bulbs rolled away from the drop chute when planting down-hill or vice-versa when travelling up-hill.

Planting completed – Harvest next.

• In 2015 we successfully planted 6 trial plots, each
• f approx. 0.9ha. Two adjacent 0.9ha plots were

left unplanted, as a control.

• We then concentrated on selecting and developing

machinery to harvest the above ground biomass.

• The harvesting machine to harvest the plots

planted in 2015 would have to be ready by the following spring i.e. March 2016.

• Ideally the biomass should be harvested with the

majority of the plants at the ‘goose neck’ stage i.e. not all in full flower. The harvester would aim to collect above ground biomass and leave around 80mm to 100mm of daffodil ‘stubble’.

Daffodils almost ready for harvest. A few more days development required, but this depends on the weather. Two designs of harvester were evaluated.

Harvesting March 2016 – Design 1

We acquired a leaf harvester base unit from Morrish Engineering, Devon and set about modifying it.

Idea is to harvest 2 rows at

• nce. This initial design

incorporated two strimmer blades to cut the two rows of daffodils at the same time. However, in early trials this design proved to be ineffective. So, the strimmer blades were removed and were replaced with an oscillating ‘rape’ knife and a purpose built ‘brush’ reel, to feed the cut material up the

• elevator. This performed

reasonably well in trials at HAU and so was transported to Pwllpeiran in time for the first harvest in March 2016.

Harvesting March 2016

Ground compaction was minimal, but, unfortunately the crop material required man-handling and was too bulky, meaning it needed further processing before galanthamine could be extracted. Design abandoned.

• As an alternative to the baby leaf

harvester machine, we purchased a second hand Amazone GH135 Flail Collector and modified it.

• This harvests 2 rows at a time.
• It has a cut width of around 1.3m.
• It holds roughly 1m³ of material.
• The material is deposited in water-tight,

lidded containers.

Harvest March 2016 – Design 2

This system worked well. The chopped material was more suitable for processing.

Harvest March 2016

Planter Mk2 – Spring 2016

• fitted a second tine from Claydon.
• purchased wider press wheels and mounted

them on a pivoting loading platform (to better follow the contours of the ground).

• replaced the ground wheel belt drive system

with a tractor driven hydraulic drive unit (to achieve up to 10t/ha planting).

• replaced the smooth hopper belts for cleated

belts.

• installed a small camera above the cleated

belts and bulb drop chutes with a video screen positioned in the tractor cab.

Planter Mk2 – Oct 2016

25/01/2019 Project: Yellow Gold

Now 2 row planting. Wider press wheels. New drop chute and flexible chute design. Variable, hydraulic drive to hopper feed belts.

Planter Mk2 – 2016

Small camera fitted above drop chutes with screen in tractor cab. New cleated belts to give better feed of bulbs.

Planting 2016

• On the steeper more challenging 2016 plots,

new problems arose:

– With a full hopper (it will hold over 1t of bulbs), where the plots had a side slope as well as the normal up-and-down slope, the planter was effectively pulling the tractor sideways across the slope - resulting in variation in row spacing and planting density, as well as broken turf. – The size of some of the rocks encountered damaged the drop chutes. – Back at HAU, these were redesigned and the tine assembly moved forward to give more room for the turf to fall back to ground before being pressed home. – Depth wheels added adjacent to the tines.

Uneven ground and rocks meant the planter required further attention.

Rocks!

Row spacing was 800/850mm.

Tine carrier assembly moved forward 100mm. Pairs of depth wheels added to each side of the planter. Back at HAU for further modification.

Double depth wheels on each side, positioned next to the vertical disc. Drop chutes redesigned.

Note the slope (20+ degrees) - the electricity supply pole is vertical.

The modified planter (Mk2) in

• peration – late Oct 2016

The final 2016 planter design.

Planting and harvest summary

• We successfully planted approximately 6ha of

plots, at 4t/ha, with the single row planter, in October 2015.

• We planted another 10ha in 2016 at various

rates (4t, 6t, 8t and 10t/ha) with the Mk2 planter and various bulb sizes (10 to 16+).

• The Amazone flail collector had successfully

been used for the 2016 harvest, but a new KRM flail collector was purchased and modified for the 2017 harvest.

Harvest March 2017

• The modified KRM harvester worked well.
• Since October 2017 John Deere UK have

provided a 5075E tractor to the project.

• AU are now analysing the sheep performance

data and sending crop samples for analysis by AP associate, Dr Xianmin Chang.

• AP started processing the harvested material

at their base in Powys and analysing the galanthamine concentration.

• AP are now developing their marketing

strategy.

• The project is scheduled to finish at the end of

October 2019.

Harvest March 2017

Harvest - March 2018

In the time remaining in the project HAU are developing a ‘new’ planter, the Mk3, where the bulbs will be delivered towards the tractor. To be ready for trials in 2019?

Early indications are that there is no effect on sheep performance – they don’t eat daffodils – and Galanthamine levels are as expected.

Thanks for listening. Any questions?

Acknowledgments: BBSRC and Innovate UK KRM Ltd UK and John Deere Ltd UK Research team: IJ Loynes, DR White, SE Cooper – HAU

K Stephens, S Head – AP MD Fraser, H Vallin, JRT Davies – AU.