EUCLEG aims to reduce Europe and China’s dependency on protein imports by developing efficient breeding strategies for the legume crops of major economic importance in human food and animal feed. The objective is to improve diversification, crop productivity, yield stability and protein quality of both forage (alfalfa and red clover) and grain (pea, faba bean and soybean) legumes. Using diverse and extensive genetic resources and taking advantage of advanced molecular tools, EUCLEG aims to identify and develop the best genetic resources, phenotyping methods and molecular tools to breed legume varieties with improved performance under biotic and abiotic stresses in the representative European and Chinese agro-ecological areas. The potential for new uses of forage species for human nutrition will be explored. Searchable databases will be developed or built to host passport, agronomic and genetic data facilitating exchanges and use of genetic resources. The evaluation of genetic resources in multi-site trials will allow to broaden the breeding material and extend agro-ecological adaptation. The genetic architecture of key breeding traits will be analysed using association studies in order to identify molecular markers related to phenotypic traits. Finally, genomic selection strategies will be assessed for their potential to improve genetic progress. Practical tools for genotyping, data management and calculation will be provided to breeders to implement marker-assisted selection and genomic selection leading to the creation of new varieties in the long-term. The partnership gathered in EUCLEG, combining public institutes and private companies of Europe and China, guaranties the transfer of knowledge from research to seed industry.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

ReVET is a Project involving 13 HEIs (3 European and 10 Asian) with the main aim to contribute to the promotion, strengthening and capacity building of veterinary studies in Asian partners Universities using the European “know-how”. The main basis of the present proposal is transferring and sharing the experience in the veterinary field from Europe to Asia and from Asia to Europe. The entire partnership will work together building and reinforcing curriculum and all the teaching material needed for a high quality standard veterinary college to be implemented in Asian partner countries. The proposal strategy is as follows; firstly, an infield study of the situation will give to the project a faithful idea of the state of the art. Secondly, this information will be reflected in a Situation Report (1 per Country) and shared on the ReVET platform. New veterinary curricula will be designed by EU and Asian academic staff; Asian teachers will receive a training of trainers in Europe (at the same time they will share their experience throughout open-day talks and lectures in the European HEIs). Third, all teaching materials needed, will be generated by European REVET Partners HEIs. Last, but not least, the new/up-dated curriculum will be implemented in the last year of the project. The impact of the project will be as a cascade: the teaching-learning process of the veterinary student is reinforced, thus skills will be improved, as the results of the improvement, the livestock production and welfare will be most favourable alleviating hunger and ensuring a better control of food safety. Finally zoonotic outbreaks will be reduced contributing to an overall beneficiary impact for the world.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

"DiTECT will develop an integrated framework for real-time detection, assessment, and mitigation of biological, chemical and environmental contaminants throughout the food supply chain. Bringing together research, industrial and food authority partners representing the agro-food industry in the EU and China, DiTECT aspires to establish the foundation for future food safety monitoring platforms, through the development of a standards-based, modular, Big Data-enabled platform, capable of accurately predicting food safety parameters of a given food product based on data collected in real-time via cost-efficient sensors, at crop, grain storage, livestock and finally in the food supply, incorporating blockchain processes. DiTECT integrates multidisciplinary research teams from fields such as microbial and spectroscopic fingerprinting technologies; emerging ICT-based food tracing systems; signal analysis and data mining. Microbial profiling will be attained via conventional microbiological analyses in tandem with advanced molecular methods (e.g., NGS-based metagenomics), while spectroscopic profiling will be based on spectral data generated using appropriate rapid, non-invasive methods and sensor devices. DiTECT recognizes that current food-chains are lacking a complete snapshot view of food safety at the crop/livestock and finished product levels, and so foresees the development of a cloud-enabled storage system for all data corresponding to different insights of product-specific safety aspects, to be integrated into. The novel food safety services will be demonstrated in four (4) real-world Pilots with the active engagement of 21 EU and 13 CN partners, using real datasets to validate efficiency improvements. The carefully structured work plan embodies a “multi-actor” approach to prototype and validates a ready-for-take-up framework of significant exploitation potential for the agro-food industry."