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Green recycling of wastewaters through cutting-edge microalgae and plant cultivation systems in extreme environments.

Environmental degradation and resource scarcity pose major challenges to sustaining life on Earth and future space exploration missions. Globally, over 100 million hectares of fertile land are depleted annually due to drought and soil degradation, jeopardizing food security, livelihoods, ecosystems, and biodiversity. As humanity aims to venture deeper into space, establishing self-sustaining operations is crucial, driving the need for innovative circular economy systems that recycle and reuse resources in water- and land-constrained environments. This project aims to develop an integrated and sustainable solution for recovering valuable resources from wastewater (WW) generated during space missions and dairy farm operations by harnessing photosynthetic organisms. We use a specific type of microalgae and cyanobacteria strains for assimilation of nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus from WW, purifying it while simultaneously utilizing CO2 to produce oxygen and nutrient-rich biomass. After that, we plan to utilize the treated effluent and biomass metabolites as biofertilizers to support growth of engineered plants like Camelina on arid soil/regolith simulating desert/space conditions. We demonstrated already effective resource recovery and soil quality improvement for sustainable agriculture and future closed-loop life support systems on Earth and in Space. This multidisciplinary project is conducting in cooperation with Italian Space Agency, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy and Beit Berl College, Kfar Saba, Israel. My group focuses in the development of analytical chemistry methods for the detection of key nutrient molecules in biomass.