The main objective of BreedingValue is to provide the knowledge and tools to utilize strawberry, raspberry and blueberry GenRes and pre-breeding material for the creation of new breeding possibilities. The achievements are directed to create European cultivars with resilience to different and changing climatic conditions, as well as adaptability to different cultivation systems. Equally important, achievements targeted at producing consumer-desirable fresh-fruit cultivars of berries with high nutritional quality. With this aim the most interesting GenRes available in different EU public and private GenRes collections and breeding programs can be identified and used for the project. The BreedingValue platform will be developed and validated by using strawberry, raspberry and blueberry, being the most important in EU berry industry, known by its high economic impact and potential. This project will apply the most recent technical advances: a) to identify conserved and maintained germplasm of the main genera appropriate for sustainable berry production throughout the EU; b) to apply new and advanced genotyping and phenotyping tools for the characterization of local races and varieties, breeding populations and pre-breeding material; c) to identify the genetic base of the most important resilience traits and fruit quality traits for selecting new cultivars with increased adaptability to different and changing climatic conditions and cultivation systems; d) to develop studies on EU consumers preference; e) to apply Life Cycle Analyses to evaluate the ecological benefits derived by the application of resilient pre-breeding material and varieties; f) to generate a novel efficient data analyses strategy; g) to develop prototype visualization tools; and h) to disseminate and communicate the results to breeders, GenRes managers, researchers , growers, market organizations, consumers, food industries, health authorities and regulatory and legislative authorities.

The main objective of GoodBerry is to provide the necessary knowledge and procedures to facilitate the development of highly productive and top quality berry fruits, even under multiple suboptimal growth conditions, at a competitive cost. The project is based on an integrative multi-actor approach, from cultivation techniques to molecular studies, aiming the development and validation of a range of tools to improve competitiveness of European berry production, and eventually the attraction and confidence of consumers. The selection of the model species can be considered as strategic since strawberry is the most important berry crop in Europe and the production of raspberry and blackcurrant are increasing strongly in recent years. The project will apply the most recent technical advances in: a) The identification of berry germplasm exhibiting advantageous balance of production vs nutritional quality throughout the EU, b) The search of innovative production systems to maintain high yield in a range of European-wide environments, c) The development of standardized and reliable analytical tools to evaluate berry production and fruit quality. As result, it is expected: a) the implementation of modern breeding strategies to accelerate the release of new berry cultivars; b) The adoption by EU-growers of high quality production systems to improve fruit quality. The proposal establishes as obligatory to disseminate and communicate the results to the scientific community, industry, the broad public and interested stakeholders user. The final impact will be to consolidate the emerging needs of high-quality berries, and to boost consumer and market confidence supported by an improved competitiveness of producers. It is a multidisciplinary, collaborative project based on complementary expertise and skills of internationally recognized berry research institutions, and highly involved key berry SMEs that will combine their effort to secure the robustness of the results.