How 5 Students Turned Seaweed Goo Into a Scalable Solution For Indoor Farming - With The Winners Of WUR Student Challenges The HAB Special Edition WUR episode artwork

EPISODE · Oct 8, 2025 · 38 MIN

How 5 Students Turned Seaweed Goo Into a Scalable Solution For Indoor Farming - With The Winners Of WUR Student Challenges The HAB Special Edition WUR

from Tomorrow's Bites with Andrés and Sjacco · host Andrés and Sjacco

What if the next big climate solution didn’t come from a lab or a boardroom, but from a student space farming challenge?That’s exactly what happened to Morgan and Feodor, two students from Wageningen University who joined forces with others to rethink food for astronauts, and ended up creating a breakthrough that could change farming here on Earth.Their idea, AstroGel, is a biodegradable, seaweed-based hydrogel designed to replace peat, the world’s most widely used plant substrate, responsible for massive CO₂ emissions and soon to be banned in the EU. What started as a concept for Mars missions could now help greenhouses transition to more sustainable practices.In this special episode in collaboration with WUR, we explore:How a space challenge led to a carbon-negative farming innovationWhy peat is both essential and destructive in today’s food systemThe scrappy student journey from whiteboard sketches to industry testsWhat they learned about failure, prototypes, and pitching under pressureWhy curiosity and bold ideas might be the missing ingredient in climate solutions🙏 LEAVE A REVIEW If you like our podcast please leave us a review on your favourite platform – even one sentence helps! Thank you for your support; it helps the show a lot and it helps others to discover the show! 👋 GET IN TOUCH WITH US👥 ⁠Linkedin⁠📸 ⁠Instagram⁠🌎 ⁠⁠Website⁠😊 The Startup: The HABLook into WUR Student Challenges & Rethink Food Challenges

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How 5 Students Turned Seaweed Goo Into a Scalable Solution For Indoor Farming - With The Winners Of WUR Student Challenges The HAB Special Edition WUR

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