NEWS

Plant factories are a fairly recent development / sector with high potential that needs critical mass funding for research and innovation as well as support to clarify / improve the regulatory framework and enhance consumer engagement to succeed and contribute to food and nutritional security, biodiversity, human health, environmental sustainability, bioeconomy and well-being.

Plant factories are plant-based systems for the circular, regenerative and competitive production of biomolecules and raw materials for industrial purposes. They represent a transformative approach and comprise diverse sustainable approaches leveraging controlled environments to optimize resource use and minimize environmental impact. The systems include plant cell and tissue cultures in bioreactors as well as closed and open greenhouse, vertical farm and on-farm plant production. They offer significant benefits across various sectors, including food, nutraceuticals, feed, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals and biomaterials. Plant factories can produce nutrient enriched diets, functional foods, dietary supplements, and high-quality feed, promoting human and animal health by addressing nutritional deficiencies. They can also generate sustainable bio-stimulants, biopesticides, and biofertilizers, reducing reliance on synthetic products in agriculture. Urban integration of location-independent plant factories supports local economies and reduces transportation emissions.

Within this frame, the Plant Factories WG proposes to join efforts in their group and with other stakeholders on three major areas of action:

• Help addressing major societal needs: sustainable production, food security, human and animal health
• Develop plant factories applications, production platforms and markets
• Advance research and development, technological development, scalability and markets,  policy and regulatory environment for plant factories.

Looking forward to further collaborating with you in the Plant Factories WG

Heiko, Holger, Johannes, Dirk, Katja and Karin

Plant Factories WG chairs: Heiko Rischer, Holger Spiegel, Johannes Buyel, Dirk Bosch and Katarina Cankar

EPSO Executive Director: Karin Metzlaff

Click here to read: Full ‘EPSO Plant Factories statement’

Contacts:
EPSO Plant Factories WG chairs:
Heiko Rischer, VTT, FI
Holger Spiegel, Fraunhofer IME, DE
Johannes Buyel, BOKU University, AT
Dirk Bosch & Katarina Cankar, WUR,  NL
EPSO:    Karin Metzlaff, EPSO Executive Director

EPSO welcomes the European Commission’s consultation and provides input on the importance of the next Framework Programme (FP) for EU competitiveness.

The European Research and Innovation FPs are crucial to enable scientists and innovators across Europe to collaborate to generate knowledge, to apply this knowledge to address todays and future challenges and to help building a strong, competitive and resilient, inclusive and democratic European society and improving life on earth.

All scientists and entrepreneurs would benefit from a stronger stand-alone R&I FP with a ringfenced budget as a crucial factor to increase EU competitiveness.

They would benefit from

• a stronger ERC and reinforced MSCA.
• Reinforcing the collaboration pillar and adding Research Actions (RAs) to create an upwards research and innovation spiral.
• Policymakers defining the goals but leaving the pathways to reach them open to beneficiaries to truly enable innovation.
• Consulting European academic associations and European industry associations to identify funding priorities.
• Simplifying implementation procedures: Increase trust in and flexibility for

Plant scientists took an active role in the EU FPs from the start and want to contribute to the future.

They are active in pillar 1, mainly in the ERC and the MSCA, both working very well.

They could contribute more to the collaboration pillar (in Horizon Europe pillar 2), particularly on the theme on Food, bioeconomy, natural resources, agriculture and environment. To this end, we suggest the following improvements:

• Address Food and Nutritional Security, environmental sustainability, biodiversity, human health and bioeconomy in parallel
• Improve / adapt crops towards ‘Diverse crops for diverse diets and human health and resilient production’.
• Combine approaches on crop improvement, crop management and crop processing.
• Policy makers should define the goals but leave the pathways how to achieve these open to the stakeholders.
• Create a new heading ‘Enabling sustainable crop improvement’ in the Work Programme and / or partnership ‘Plant biology and breeding’.
• Better link the health theme with the food, agriculture, biotechnology theme.

EPSO looks forward to further discuss and help implement these recommendations with colleagues from the European Commission and the Member State ministries and funders.

Click here to read: Full EPSO position paper & Contribution ID: f614256c-75e8-4ad6-a771-a4a70b94c0be.pdf, submitted 2.5.2025 to the MFF / EU funding for competitiveness consultation.

Contact:

Karin Metzlaff, EPSO Executive Director, BE

EPSO has the pleasure of announcing the re-launch of the original Molecular Farming Working Group with a larger scope now as the Plant Factories WG.

We invite EPSO member organisations to confirm their 1-3 experts for this WG. Please check on the WG website which experts are in the WG already. To enroll up to three experts, please email to Karin M and cc the chairs and provide for each one the name, function in the institute / university, 1-3 keywords on the expertise and contact details. Pls confirm as well if the expert(s) will join the 1st meeting online 6.3.2025 9-13 CET, best by 25 February.

We look forward to meeting you 6^th March

Holger Spiegel, Johannes Buyel, Heiko Rischer, Dirk Bosch, Katarina Cankar (WG chairs) and Karin Metzlaff (EPSO)

Click her to read:  The announcement with introduction and scope of the WG

Contacts:

Holger Spiegel (Fraunhofer, DE), Johannes Buyel (BOKU, AT), Heiko Rischer (VTT, FI), Dirk Bosch & Katarina Cankar (WUR, NL) and Karin Metzlaff (EPSO)

EPSO | 31.10.2024 | all WGs

 EPSO sees the move towards a stronger, transformative, less prescriptive and more bottom-up R&I FP with expanding European Research Council (ERC) and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), European Innovation Council (EIC) and boosting pan-European collaborative research across the R&I continuum as an important step into the future.

 EPSO welcomes the report ‘Align, Act Accelerate Research, Technology and Innovation to boost European competitiveness’ published by the Expert Group on the interim evaluation of Horizon Europe and guide on the evolution of the European Research and Innovation (R&I) Framework Programme (FP).

EPSO is pleased that the main recommendations it submitted to the Expert Group are reflected in the report, such as:

• Add Research Actions in the collaboration programme to create an upwards R&I spiral and a quantum change in the Framework Programme. Make collaborative basic research an intrinsic component (in recommendations 3, 6, 7).
• Preserve and strengthen the European Research Council and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (in recommendation 5).
• Policy makers should define the goals but leave the pathways for how to achieve these open to the stakeholders to truly enable innovation (in recommendation 9).
• Increase trust in and flexibility for beneficiaries (in recommendation 9).
• Add funds from other programmes for actions transferred from these to the Framework programme.

EPSO urges to better engage and consult European academic associations and European industry associations on R&I strategies and policies.

Regarding the plant sector, this includes the suggestion to build, from 2025 on, a coherent set of topics enabling formation of a critical mass of effort towards crop improvement for Food and nutritional security and sustainability.

EPSO provided advice on this to the Expert Group, national ministries, and the European Commission and is looking forward to continuing this constructive collaboration with advice towards the development of the next R&I Framework Programme.

  Click here to read: Full EPSO first reaction to the Expert Group evaluation of Horizon Europe and guiding the evolution of the European R&I Framework, 31.10.2024

Contacts: 

Karin Metzlaff, EPSO Executive Director, BE

Odd Arne Rognli, NMBU, NO & EPSO President

Alan Schulman, LUKE, Univ. Helsinki, & former EPSO President

EPSO was kindly invited by Manuel Heitor, chair of the High-level Expert Group on Horizon Europe and FP10, to answer four questions to provide input to the discussion of the HLG. 

EPSO highlights Food and Nutritional Security as a major challenge to be tackled together with Climate change, biodiversity, human health.

EPSO suggests strengthening the European Research Council (ERC) and the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA).

Most important innovations which should be considered in FP10 are advised by EPSO as follows:

• Add Research Actions in pillar 2: To overcome the gap of collaborative basic research and complete the research and innovation cycle in pillar 2, we recommend making collaborative basic research an intrinsic component of R&I Actions and introducing Research Actions focussed on basic and applied research. In this way an upward spiral would be created that is adding new knowledge in each round, elevating the innovation to the next higher level – a step change in the Framework Programme.
• Strategic investment in crucial R&I areas – e.g. Critical mass support for Plant biology and crop improvement / adaptation to address the challenges above – include all approaches: comprehensive approaches from all branches of basic plant biology, ranging from molecular and genomic to cellular, developmental, physiological, and systems, to deliver novel crop varieties (crop improvement and plant breeding) adapted to climate change and contributing to Food and Nutritional Security, environmental sustainability, biodiversity (natural and cultivated) and human health. This will enable the shift from reliance on ‘elite varieties under optimal conditions’ to ‘nutritious and resilient varieties under a range of constraints’ (environment, climate, input, processing, consumer demands).
• Policy makers should define the goals, but not the pathways how to reach these to truly enable innovation.
• Add funds from other programmes for actions transferred from these – there is only one research programme.
• Increase trust in and flexibility for beneficiaries.
• Further simplify proposal / project / reporting to no longer need consultancies to succeed.

EPSO looks forward to further discuss and help implement these recommendations with colleagues from the High-Level Group, the Member State ministries and funders, the European Parliament and the European Commission.

Click here to read: Full EPSO – HE FP10 – Answers to questions by M Heitor – HLG, 17.7.2024

Contacts:

Karin Metzlaff, EPSO Executive Director, BE

Odd Arne Rognli, NMBU, NO & EPSO President

Alan Schulman, LUKE, Univ. Helsinki, & former EPSO President

The 35th Europe-wide seminar of the series supported by the European Plant Science Organisation (EPSO) and aimed at the Plant Science community and its stakeholders.

TTT: The seminar will be held online each third Thursday of the month at three (CET).  

On 19th September 2024 at 15:00 (CET) we will present three talks exploring “Harnessing biosynthetic pathways in plants”: 

Suvi T. Häkkinen, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Ltd: “Chicory as a potential source of bioactive ingredients”

Benjamin Kogelmann, BOKU, Austria: “Advanced glycan-modulation in Nicotiana benthamiana”

Shiqiang Gao, University of Würzburg, Germany: “Optogenetics for plant research”

The seminars will be hosted on Zoom and last approximately 1.5 hours. Numbers will be limited to 300 attendees and therefore please register early if you would like to join. There will be ample opportunities to ask questions and join the debate. So please join us to support this new and exciting initiative for European Plant Science by following this link just prior to the start of the seminar.

EPSO members register in advance for this meeting via this Zoom link.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

In the coming months we will be on the lookout for talented plant scientists among the EPSO membership to present their findings and perspectives to the EPSO seminar series. If we approach you to talk, we hope you will be happy to support the initiative. This is a fantastic opportunity for both eminent world leaders and talented up-and-coming early career researchers to present their research to an international audience and to network with potential collaborators. If you wish to suggest a theme for one of the upcoming seminars and / or nominate yourself or one of your colleagues to give a seminar, we most welcome your suggestions. Please contact Tim George ([email protected]) to provide your name and potential talk title.

We look forward to seeing you all for the 35th EPSO seminar on the 19th September 2024.

Tim George, Alan Schulman and Marie-Theres Hauser

EPSO Plant Science Seminar Series Organising Committee 

Click here to read: Full EPSO news item 

Contacts:

Tim George, Hutton / UK & EPSO Board

Alan Schulman, LUKE / FI & Adviser EPSO Board

Marie-Theres Hauser BOKU / AT & EPSO Board