Drought is the main problem of agriculture worldwide and the situation is expected to get worse with climate change. Agriculture in the Mediterranean area could be particularly damaged and one of the primary menaces is agro-diversity depletion. Maize is one of the most important crops worldwide and is a model crop in plant breeding; however, it is especially vulnerable to abiotic stresses (heat and drought) encountered in a scenario of climate change. The objectives of DROMAMED are to: 1) assemble germplasm collections of maize adapted to Mediterranean dry areas, pooling and evaluating stress-resistant varieties from the national collections, 2) support innovative farming systems by promoting quality and sustainability of agricultural models based on organic and family agriculture, 3) study genetic factors involved in maize adaptation to drought and heat stress, 4) investigate the physiological and morphological mechanisms involved in maize responses to stresses, 5) establish predictive models and selection criteria for breeding programs focusing on tolerance to stress (phenotypic, marker assisted and genomic selection models will be designed to improve tolerance to individual and combined stresses), and 6) release new stress tolerant varieties and knowledge for being used by stakeholders; all these achievements will contribute to the sustainability of production and mitigation of the effects of stress in present and future climate scenarios. DROMAMED intends to 1) valorize the germplasm collections maintained in Mediterranean countries, with entries that have been selected for adaptation to a large diversity of stressful environments, 2) promote innovative crop management practices to increase quality and sustainability of organic and family agricultural systems, 3) capitalize current and new knowledge about mechanisms of tolerance to abiotic stresses, and 4) develop selection methods that will increase our ability to improve breeding approaches enhancing maize tolerance to abiotic stresses. DROMAMED will contribute to the progress of knowledge beyond the state of the art by dissecting the genetic, biochemical, morphological and physiological mechanisms underlying stress tolerance, providing useful tools and materials to capitalize the diversity of maize for cultivation under low inputs in the Mediterranean area and thus leading to rescue germplasm for future agriculture. The social impact will be encouraged in DROMAMED reling on close contacts between associations that represent the needs of producers and researchers to gather precise information on demands of stakeholders, try to fulfil as much as possible those demands, and transfer to growers technical knowledge to facilitate cultivation of the released drought tolerant populations. These associations are the Spanish Society for Organic Agriculture (SEAE), the Italian Maize Growers Association (AMI), the Italian Confederation Agricultural Producers (COPAGRI), the Breeding Cattle Associations of Antalya Province of Turkey (BCAAT), and the Organic Agriculture Association of Turkey (ETO).

Transforming agriculture in the context of climate change is a central challenge in North-Africa, the most food-import-dependent region worldwide and a climate change hotspot. Tackling these issues, Agro-Ecology (AE) appears as an answer to meet both the challenges of global sustainability and local resilience. In this context, NATAE consortium brings together high-level research institutions, international organisations and NGOs with strong experience on AE approaches and exceptional capacity to induce transformational change by informing policies and education. NATAE project aims to foster the adoption of science-based, locally-tailored and co-designed AE strategies in North Africa by creating a comprehensive and quantitative baseline on AE, providing a shared understanding, multidimensional performance measures, and analyses of AE potential for meeting consumers demand on the market. To achieve this goal, NATAE will set-up and inform a unique multi-actor community of knowledge and capacity building on AE in the Mediterranean, with ground breaking findings on the performances of AE-Practices (AEP) in North Africa. An original multi-dimensional, multi-scale evaluation framework covering dimensions currently overlooked, and a replicable methodological guidebook will be designed. An integrated modelling approach combining a biophysical, a household/regional bio-economic indicator modelling chain will be used to develop a unique Integrated Assessment of Agricultural Systems to assess the resilience of AEP-based farming systems. Participatory approaches via Living Labs will be elaborated to develop, test and capitalize alternative public policies and foster AE transitions. An integrated group of dissemination activities, will further test, advance and communicate a range of existing AE innovations from farm to fork, including innovative farm practices, value-chain innovations, and innovations in food system governance, advancing their respective readiness level.

The SAFEMED Project aims at analyzing the conditions for an international co-regulation of food safety between North and South Mediterranean sides. It consists in analysing the structure of the competition between supply chains of both sides and examining the possibilities for a coordination of public and private food safety strategies. The Project develops a multi-criteria analysis that makes it possible to conciliate: (i) The imperative of food safety, to assure European consumers’ health via the provision of safe imports, and, at the same time, the health of South Mediterranean consumers that have to take advantage of the evolution of good agricultural practices at international level, (ii) Producers’ market access, given that agrifood exports represent an important factor of South countries’ economic development, (iii) Safe and fair competition among actors of North and South sides to avoid phenomena of “sanitary dumping” (derived from countries heterogeneity of food safety regulations). Food safety is considered as a public good, in the sense that an under-provision of food safety may be harmful to all stakeholders (firms and consumers) and not only to those responsible for this deficit. The Project is built by putting the emphasis on the characteristics of the Economies of the two Mediterranean sides (by including three countries of the North side, Spain, France, and Italy, and three countries of the South side, Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia). An important role is given to commercialization and intermediate sectors, in addition to the production sector, by focusing notably on theoretical works and empirical works on fruit and vegetable supply chains. The value sharing between intermediate actors localized in importing countries and local stakeholders is taken into account as an indicator of the equity of North/South trade relationships. As for the methodology, SAFEMED studies are based on surveys (on different stakeholders) and the creation of databases with the implementation of experimental markets. More specifically, information is collected on production system organization, food safety investment costs (specific investments, and costs of compliance with food safety norms and private standards set up by importers and retailers), and consumer behavior towards sanitary crisis according to the available information at the time of purchase. Technical-economics studies (integrating microbiological and toxicological analysis) aim at measuring the actual sanitary risk and the related prevention cost, in the framework of cost-benefit analysis. The priority is given, in the Project SAFEMED, to the micro economic analysis of supply chain organization, by explicitly taking into account the commercialization sector and the different types of intermediate actors (importers, retailers, group purchasing organizations, wholesale markets, etc.). Further, based on the recent developments of the theories of industrial organization, International Industrial Economics and Structural Econometrics (explaining actors’ behavior starting from formal representations of this latter), the Project aims at identifying the optimal co-regulation policies, taking into account the strategic behavior of commercialization and import firms.

In the Mediterranean region, crop production and food security are closely linked to the adaptation of cropping systems to multiple abiotic stresses, i.e. drought and salinity. Traditionally, monoculture practices are widespread in this area resulting in impaired the soil fertility and productivity. Furthermore, crop production is facing many challenges, such as climate change and population increase, particularly severe in the Mediterranean dry lands. Τhe strategic goal of BIOACT is to provide solutions for improving agroecosystem resilience to climate change, for decreasing GHG emissions and increasing carbon storage, and for reducing chemical inputs and waste production in the Mediterranean area. In this context, regenerative agriculture practices are considered as an efficient agronomic approach to improve soil and water conservation, to restore soil biodiversity, through the exploitation of wild crop relatives and the application of microorganisms-enriched composted organic waste, and to promote food security The proposed approach aims to improve wheat-based agroecosystem by developing a set of regenerative farming practices exploiting the biodiversity of wheat germplasm. This will be achieved by harnessing the selected drought tolerant durum wheat genotype from PRIMA EXPLOWHEAT project. Climate and stress-resilient wheat lines will be incorporated in intercropped wheat-legume systems in arid and marginal lands thriving in the Med region, to improve crop yield and quality and soil fertility. In addition, the functional indigenous microbial diversity will be explored to empower the wheat-legume intercropped system. BIOACT proposes a concept based on two main aspects: 1-introducing the cultivation of high-performance durum wheat cultivars in arid and marginal land of Mediterranean area; 2- developing agroecological practices exploiting the microbiome of the soil-wheat system. BIOACT will develop regenerative agricultural practices based on durum wheat plants intercropped with legume. Wheat and legume residues will be composted with wheat associated microbiome and enriched with Trichoderma to obtain an enriched compost to be incorporated before the successive wheat crop. Application of endophytic fungi as Trichoderma spp. could mitigate the harmful impact of abiotic and biotic stress and stimulate plant growth mainly enhancing the macronutrient availability from the organic substrate, while reducing in particular the potential lack of N, increasing NutUE and minimizing agro-chemical inputs decrease of losses due to Fusarium culmorum and associated mycotoxins negative impacts.

The FREECLIMB project is build to match objective 1 of the PRIMA framework in developing smart and sustainable farming systems to maintain natural resources and to increase production efficiency. The project targets major fruit tree species with the aim of improving the availability of breeding and germplasm material adapted to limited external resources (input) and future climatic scenarios in the Mediterranean area, through the characterization and exploitation of local biodiversity. This target will be particularly relevant for Mediterranean agriculture where cropping systems have to cope with preservation (or restoration) of the natural resources in a very constrained environmental context (climate change, water scarcity). The project will focus on key ideotypes elaborated in collaboration with Fruit Farming Actors (FFAs, breeders, nurseries, growers) with the core objective of providing diverse germplasm, tools and methods to accelerate exploitation, breeding and selection of resilient varieties in key traditional fruit crops of Mediterranean agriculture (stone fruits such as peach, apricot and almond; Citrus spp.; grape; olive). To these ends, the project will pursue the following specific objectives: i) developing and applying protocols (e.g. phenotyping methods) and integrated tools (e.g. genotyping methods, data analysis) to support the characterization, exploitation and selection of varieties adapted to a range of agro-ecological and management conditions; ii) dissecting the genetic bases of traits/processes linked to sustainability and plant resilience to biotic and abiotic stress, with particular focus on disentangling genotype x environment x management interaction (GxExM); iii) unravelling the molecular, biochemical and physiological basis of plant adaptation to different environmental (soil and climate) and agronomic conditions (water and fertilizer management) and to biotic/abiotic (single or multiple) stresses; iv) developing and applying genomics-based breeding tools to improve introgression and selection efficiency; v) devising adaptation strategies to cope with the combined effects of multiple stresses occurring under field conditions (e.g heat and drought, pests and diseases); vi) exploiting germplasm resources, by identifying and characterizing spontaneous and domesticated sources of biodiversity; vii) transferring project results through training and dissemination activities dedicated especially to breeders, nurseries and growers, particularly in those countries where fruit production is less developed. Considering southern countries prefigure climate change scenarios predicted for northern ones, FREECLIMB will strongly benefit from collaboration between the south and north Mediterranean shores: for each species targeted by the project at least two countries are involved one from the north and one from the south. The balanced composition of the consortium ensures an equal footing approach with particular attention to co-ownership of results, mutual interest, and shared benefits.