We are five students from Wageningen University. For a course we are currently doing a project for Heijmans Wegen B.V. It is a nice international group, since we have a Filipino, a Greek, a German, a Chinese and one Dutch person. All of us do different studies, from plant sciences to development economics. The goal for this project is to find suitable and profitable species that can be grown in the roadsides of highways for the production of biomass. This vegetation can then for example be combusted to generate green energy.

Another thing for which the wood can be used is to make chipboard. A totally different thing we would like to investigate as well is to find a plant species from which we can subtract protein, since this is even more valuable. In total we will be working on it for 8 weeks. We will also be looking at the people’s and policy maker’s opinions to find out if people find it an appealing idea to see trees growing in the highway roadsides. The road verges might even be able to function as part of the Ecological Head Structure. Yesterday we visited a test field from Heijmans in Rilland to see what the soil condition is and to see by ourselves how the willow and poplar trees are growing. The results from this field visit we will use in our report to predict how willow and popular will grow in highway verges. On the 11th of December we will give a workshop where we will present our results. If you are interested you can send an email to Dit e-mailadres is beschermd tegen spambots. U heeft Javascript nodig om het te kunnen zien. .