NEWS

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 is pleased to announce the publication of its 61st newsletter. The shorter public version of the Newsletter is available here. EPSO members can log in and read the full version available in the Members’ Only section. The next edition of the EPSO newsletter will be in autumn 2025. Please send us your articles by mid-October.

Happy reading!

Click here for the content of the full version:

Contacts:
Karin Metzlaff, EPSO
Maija Malnaca, EPSO

Today we are delighted to publish our Fascination of Plants Day 2024 Success Stories which provide an insight into the wide range of inspiring events about plants held across the world last year.

The seventh biennial international Fascination of Plants Day was a huge global success with over 670 interactive events across 65 countries engaging thousands of people around plant science and the manyfold uses of plants.

People took to social media and shared their photos and event stories using the hashtag #PlantDay. This increased the @PlantDay18May X/twitter account following to over 4,600 followers and Instagram to over 1000 followers. Some events featured in outside publications and media, broadcasted on tv and radio, and reported in local and national newspapers.

Many thanks to the over 65 National Coordinators and thousands of enthusiastic event organisers across the globe for engaging people from their local area, city, region and even the entire country in exciting events! We also thank the many partners and contributors who helped EPSO engage its broad audience by providing resources to make this success possible.

We invite you to join us in preparing for an even bigger and better Fascination of Plants Day in 2026! Start planning events in your country and keep posting about plants. We look forward to seeing you all and your fascinating interactive events in 2026!

Karin Metzlaff, Max Moser, Maija Malnaca, Przemyslaw Wojtaszek and Trine Hvoslef-Eide – the Global FoPD coordinators

Click here to read: Full FoDP Press Release and Success Stories

Contacts
Maija Malnaca, EPSO Publications Officer
Karin Metzlaff, EPSO Executive Director

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