NEWS

EPSO presents its work on the contributions of plant science to Food and Nutritional Security, Human Health and environmental sustainability, EPSO’s activities in science advice to policy towards the Horizon Europe Strategic Plan and on Agricultural Technologies, and science support. Make best use of our series of national plant research structure and funding for your bilateral collaborations, in this issue we feature Norway.

The shorter public version of the Newsletter is available here.
Please, log in and read the full version available in the Members’ Only section.

The table of content

Editorial
EPSO challenges and contributions in 2020 and beyond

EPSO activities

• EPSO advises on science policy: Research and innovation strategies; Agricultural technologies
• EPSO holds General Meeting 2020 as 9 Regional GM meetings on 2-3.7.2020
• EPSO Young Plant Scientist Award 2020
• Call for EPSO Internship Experts and PhD student trainees
• Fascination of Plants Day — prepare for FoPD 2021 around the world
• Agricultural solutions for wheat with down-to-earth innovation
• Nutritional Security Working Group
• Plants and Microbiomes Working Group 3rd workshop 13-14.1.2021
• Plant Biology Europe 2020 conference postponed to 28.6.-1.7.2021
• EPSO Team update

Members’ news

• CHIC – A game changer for inulin and terpene production
• TOMRES — increasing water and nutrient use efficiency in tomato
• CropBooster-P project — towards better equipped crop plants
• The second Call of SusCrop funds research in sustainable crop production
• A Common Digital Space for the Life Sciences
• CRAG has been awarded a MSCA-COFUND Fellowship programme
• LIFEGENMON Final Conference in Ljubljana / Slovenia, 21–25.9.2020
• Herbarium genomics
• Can viruses help us defend plant health?
• SILESIA, a novel flax cultivar relevant to human health
• Visibility of European Research Infrastructures
• Agricultural Systems of the Future and food4future (f4f)
• PhD fellowship programme RESPONSE – to society and policy needs through plant, food and energy sciences”
• Plant Science Experiments, an E-book for children and teenagers
• 19th International Conference “Life Sciences for Sustainable Development”
• 2nd Cologne Conference on Food for Future13-14.9.2021

National, European and global funding

• Norway
• Horizon Europe

Career opportunities and (postponed) meetings
About EPSO

Contacts: Alexandra Barnoux & Karin Metzlaff, EPSO

Plant research and innovation can contribute through three main paths to achieve Nutritional Security (NS):

1. Underutilised nutritious fruit and vegetable crops: improve their economic performance and further increase their nutritional quality – emerging over the past years and providing co-benefits in terms of NS and sustainable environment – the focus of this statement.
2. Biofortification: increasing micronutrients in staple crops and / or enriching compounds enhancing the bioavailability of micronutrients – a strategy developed over the past decade which needs to be continued for consumers depending on or preferring staple crop products.
3. Supplements: adding beneficial compounds during food processing for the end product – the most common strategy until now, but the mainly chemically synthesised compounds need to be replaced by their natural counterparts in future, e.g.  from niche crops or agri-food side-products.

Plant based foods are receiving a remarkable attention during the last decades in the research field of nutrition, due to the biological activities recognized for many classes of phytochemicals and the relevance that food security topics are obtaining in European countries. The availability and accessibility to nutritionally rich food sources are hallmarks for human health and wellbeing, that is why many efforts are being directed towards old and new generations of plant crops. At multiple levels, EPSO and scientists involved in the Nutritional Security (NS) working group are discussing the best strategies to increase the content in beneficial biocompounds in the daily diet of European consumers.

1.  First level: Re-discovering underused species and landraces of fruits, vegetables and staple crops
2. Second level: Use of new metabolic engineering / new breeding technologies to re-design high quality crops.
3. Third level: Promoting co-developing improved crops and agricultural management practices and post-harvest processes for these to keep or even enhance nutritional quality in the fresh and transformed products.
4. Fourth level: Linking the concept of diverse diets enriched in different classes of nutritionally active biocompounds with the prevention of human diseases.
5. Fifth level: Linking the concept of diverse diets to human health AND environmental benefits.

This underpins the recommendation by plant scientists to develop ‘diverse crops with diverse cropping systems for diverse diets and human health and resilient production’ as a multi-disciplinary and cross-sectorial approach to achieve Nutritional Security and Environmental Sustainability as co-benefits.

The draft statement will be further discussed at the next EPSO NS Workshop early 2021 and then finalised. Contact the authors by end June to express your interest to participate in this workshop.

Click here to read the full EPSO draft statement

Contacts:

• Angelo Santino, CNR, IT & EPSO NS WG chair
• Monika Schreiner, IGZ Grossbeeren, DE & EPSO NS WG chair
• Chiara Tonelli, University of Milano & EPSO NS WG chair
• Karin Metzlaff, EPSO, BE

The University of Cologne Competence Area “Food Security” and the Institute of Geography invite you to the “2nd Cologne Conference on Food for Future” to be held between 13-14 September 2021 in Cologne, Germany (initially scheduled for 14 – 15 September 2020)

The general objective of the conference is to bring together scientists with different expertise to discuss cross-disciplinary aspects of the future of food production, development of new products & processes, land use change in urban and peri-urban agriculture and the impact of development on everyday rural livelihood to ensure global food and nutrition security.

This year’s conference focuses on:

• Functional Food
• Plant-Environment Interactions
• Urbanization and Development
• Food and Rural Livelihoods

We call for oral presentations and posters. Young investigators from developing countries have the opportunity to apply for travel grants.

Please find more information on www.food-for-future.eu

The ISDC has a mandate for:

• Foresight work to inform CGIAR’s longer term research strategy;
• Horizon scanning to provide analysis on how emerging trends and developments can be taken into account in CGIAR’s work;
• Priority setting exercises and analyses integrating both ex-post and ex-ante analyses;
• Guidance for periodic proposal assessment processes; and
• Other functions, on the strategic direction of CGIAR and the value of its research agenda.

Successful candidates will be appointed to serve for three years to help the ISDC contribute to the strategic and portfolio planning and positioning of CGIAR. Specific disciplines and skills needed: water and soil management; non-economic social sciences; key development process experience and stakeholder engagement; and value chains and the private sector.

Applications and nominations must be submitted by not later than 6pm, local Montpellier, France time on Monday 1 June 2020 via email to [email protected]

Source : CGIAR, 07.05.2020

The CHIC project aims to develop sets of new chicory varieties to produce, on one hand, more and healthier inulin food fiber and, on the other hand, identify and produce medicinal terpenes in sufficient amounts. These varieties are developed via genome editing. Safety, socio-economic and environmental impact as well as stakeholders’ needs and concerns when implementing such new varieties are also investigated in this project.

The CHIC project is looking as well into the regulation and legislation of new plant breeding techniques comparing approaches across the world which could inspire solutions for Europe. Right now, it is dealing with two possible futures. Indeed products of CHIC projects could be regulated as gene edited only or GMO products.

EPSO is partner in the CHIC project focusing on stakeholder engagement and supporting communication.

Read more about CHIC progress in its third newsletter organised around the following focuses :

1. Development of four conceptually different New Plant Breeding techniques (NPBTs)
2. Implementation of NPBTs for dietary inulin
3. Implementation of NPBT in chicory for bioactive terpenes
4. Technical and risk and regulatory assessments of NPBTs
5. Socio-economic and environmental impacts on the whole vale chain
6. Stakeholder engagement
7. Communication and dissemination
8. Commercial exploitation of chicory as a multipurpose crop

CHIC is a research and innovation project supported through the EU Horizon 2020 funding programme with a budget of €7.3 million

Contacts: Macarena Sanz, ID Consortium, ES – Dirk Bosch, Wageningen University, NL (Coordinator)

CGIAR, the world’s largest public research network on food systems, is changing identity to One CGIAR with a sharpened focus to 2030, in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. It will integrate management, policies, and services; finding new, more impactful ways of doing research; sharing and investing more, pooled funding; and unifying its governance, including creation of the One CGIAR Common Board.

CGIAR’s Nominations Committee invites applications from qualified individuals to serve as members of the One CGIAR Common Board (anticipated appointment 1 September 2020). Board members will be central to the transformation of CGIAR and its mission to deliver on global goals. The role presents opportunities to work with leaders across the CGIAR System, forging new linkages and partnerships in pursuit of an innovative, vital agenda.

For more details, please visit: https://www.sri-executive.com/offer/?id=8687

Source : CGIAR, 17.04.2020