Air, food and soilless substrate quality assessment in rooftop agriculture
- Autores: Mireia Ercilla Montserrat
- Directores de la Tesis: Pere Muñoz Odina (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona ( España ) en 2019
- Idioma: español
- Materias:
- Enlaces
- Tesis en acceso abierto en: TESEO
- Resumen
Urban agriculture (UA), particularly rooftop urban agriculture (RA), has increased in the last few years to satisfy the growing demand for local food production in cities. Previous research has demonstrated the technical viability and quantified the environmental impacts of producing food on rooftops, both in and outside greenhouses. However, no in-depth research has been carried out yet on the key aspect of food quality, which cuts right across the environment, the system and the final product, in this case the food.
In general, heavy metal pollution is one of the most pressing concerns in the deliberation about food security and food safety in Europe. Additionally, in the case of UA, crops are often very close to roads with heavy traffic and with a high atmospheric pollution risk. Another relevant concern about air quality specific to protected crops is the biological air quality inside greenhouses. The concentration levels of pollen and fungus spores suspended in the air can affect people who regularly work in the greenhouse and it is not known how this plays in an urban context. High water consumption of gardens in Mediterranean cities, where water is a scarce resource, is also a key factor to assess. At the same time, there is a demand to promote UA in the context of circular cities, using green materials near the place of consumption, which helps reduce the environmental impacts of food production. For these reasons, it was also considered essential to study customers’ perception and acceptance of this type of agriculture and the food it produces.
This doctoral thesis aims to fill these gaps by addressing the following research questions: -Does atmospheric heavy metal pollution in cities contaminate soilless crops from RA and RTGs? -Are the biological air conditions in RTGs adequate to provide safe working environments? And in the case of i-RTGS, can its air be recirculated while ensuring safe environment for building users? - Are we using adequate substrates for urban agriculture to mitigate the effects of climate change and increase resilience to drought? -What is the consumer’s perception of RA and products grown in these systems? This dissertation contributes to understanding the main factors influencing the quality of food and RA cultivation systems and provides new strategies to increase their quality. The results from the different points analyzed demonstrate that, in an urban context, it is possible to produce high quality food products from high crop yields while adopting circular economy strategies, such as the use of biowaste as a substrate.
Future research on the fields assessed might focus on the following areas: • Evaluating contamination through additional atmospheric pollutants • Determining the heavy metal content in longtime leafy crops • Studying the dynamics of allergenic particles in winter, the season with the lowest ventilation levels inside an RTG • Exploring and optimizing organic substrates from local RA • Further assessing the perception of quality through organoleptic studies with trained panels and with other techniques of food characterization, such as spectroscopy
