back to news list

Summer Festival in Bad Saarow

food4future presented urban nutrition of the future and introduced the new project SolKubiM.

08.07.2025
Share on
Photo: Anton Lehman, Dr. Torsten Schweikert, Marco Kreische, Axel Walter, Valeriya Denisova; Tobias Bayer, Steffanie Werner, Konstantin Schüwarov, Prof. Dr. Monika Schreiner, Dr. Anna Fricke, Prof. Nicole van Dam, Kerstin Böse, Andrea Maikath, Babette Reg

On July 5, 2025, food4future participated in the summer festival of the Bad Saarow thermal spa – offering a diverse program focused on the future of urban nutrition, alternative food sources, and digital learning formats. The occasion was the public launch of the SolKubiM project, which explores brine-based algae cultivation systems in Bad Saarow.

 

SolKubiM: Cultivating algae with regional brine

The aim of SolKubiM is to cultivate high-quality macroalgae sustainably in inland regions - without seawater, but with regionally available deep brine. This is already being extracted and processed in Bad Saarow. By using waste heat and brine from the thermal spa, the planned cultivation system can be operated in a particularly resource-conserving and energy-efficient manner. In future, the biomass produced is to be used for applications in cosmetics as well as in food and animal feed production. The concept is innovative: the direct integration of the cultivation system into the thermal spa operation allows multiple use of the brine and strengthens regional value creation.

Presentations and exchange

After the welcome address by Axel Walter, Managing Director of Bad Saarow Kur GmbH, Prof. Dr. Monika Schreiner (IGZ) continued with a presentation of the overall food4future project. Dr. Anna Fricke (IGZ) then presented the SolKubiM project and explained how brine and the city can be considered together in a sustainable food system in the future.

Further contributions came from:

  • Marco Kreische (IGV) spoke about the potential of cultivating microalgae
  • Prof. Dr. Susanne Baldermann (University of Bayreuth) presented findings on halophytes and old vegetable varieties.

After the presentations, things got interactive:

  • Living micro- and macroalgae
  • Algae food samples from Viva Maris GmbH
  • The new educational game from HTW Berlin, in which players build urban biofactories and supply cities with crickets, jellyfish and algae
  • A Veggi-Meter for measuring carotenoids in the skin and microalgae information on interactive steles

The SolKubiM project is supported by the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture as part of its innovation funding. The scientific integration takes place via the funding line Agricultural Systems of the Future of the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space. We would like to thank Therme Bad Saarow for the close cooperation and all guests and partners for their great interest and valuable input!

 

Here you can find our algae quiz

back to news list