In a context of climate, socio-economic, policy and institutional changes, the Mediterranean region (MR) needs to strengthen its food and nutrition security, while improving its natural resource management. The major challenges are therefore: i) making agricultural food production systems highly resilient to water shortage and climate and market shocks; ii) combining food production and provision of ecosystem services in a “sustainable intensification” of farming systems to meet the ever growing food demand; iii) sustaining rural populations, ensuring farming profitability and employment and iv) providing rural and urban consumers with safe and nutritious, culturally acceptable and economically accessible food. Using the multi-scale and multidomain Integrated Assessment of Agricultural Systems (IAAS) approach, the SEMIARID project aims at assessing the resilience of Mediterranean farming systems in relation with their crop diversity, water management, farm structure and food production strategy, in order to evaluate whether they can maintain high productivity and provision of ecosystem services in the face of possible climate and socio-economic changes/shocks. The combination of biophysical and household bio-economic models will allow capturing both production and consumption decisions of farming households and environmental facets of farming activity and to identify levers of action to improve these performances. Combining model insights and local stakeholder collaboration, scenarios will be designed for resilience simulation and trade-off analysis to test scientific hypothesis and for strategic thinking with stakeholders. On the basis of representative household farm types in three contrasting case studies in Morocco, Algeria and France, original knowledge and innovative methodological tools will be developed in three fields. 1. The exploration of the role of intra-farm and inter-farm diversity in determining the resilience and adaptability of Mediterranean agricultural systems. Overall, the question addresses the assessment of the resilience of Mediterranean farming systems to global change (climate, socio-economic) and how it is affected by diversity in cropping systems (annual vs. perennial ; succession vs. association), water management (rain-fed, irrigated), farm structure (size, number and nature of activities, availability of irrigation, etc.), local resource availability (water, labour, land) and access to facilities (technical supports, market, etc.). 2. The implementation of a modelling framework for integrated impact assessment to explore how different scenarios of diversity and adaptiveness developed in interaction with local stakeholders, might improve the resilience of Mediterranean farming systems to reduced water availability and quality in a context of global change. 3. The emergence of a multidisciplinary group of Mediterranean researchers and students supported by an international course on integrated modelling for resilience assessment and integrated impact analysis, using the Case Studies as illustration.

The project reflects the priority of Algerian Government to implement the quality assurance system in higher education. This system was not in place till now. The HEI's are having as a target to set up their institutional quality assurance systems and to put in place all necessary measures. The main objective of this project is to enhance the management, governance and innovation capacities, as well as the internationalization of HEIs. Project is national joint project. Three Algerian HEI's in the field of agriculture and biosystems engineering, as beneficiary partners, in collaboration with partners from Lithuania and Estonia will work on: - offering new institutional capacity in internal quality assurance system (IQAS) within recipient HEI. This system will be developed by local Algerian experts previously trained in European partner institutions, thus the ownership of results will be ensured; - transfer of European experience for local staff during training sessions in European universities and following update of skills in real case situations in implementing and testing the IQAS at home institutions; - Algerian partner institutions will get the guidance and piloting in preparing self-evaluation reports and will go through external pilot evaluation by an European evaluation institution with the following sharing of experiences and lessons among partners and other stakeholders; - exploitation of project results will include transferring of project recommendations to national policy makers in higher education contributing to the national policy and methodology of quality assurance in HEI in Algeria. Long term project impact on participating HEI's , other stakeholders (including other HEI's), also on national quality assurance policies in higher education in Algeria is envisaged.

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.

Relevance of the project to the specific call: The ongoing process of global warming is causing dramatic changes in environmental conditions worldwide. Predictions show that many regions will become more arid, which will impact on local crop cultivation. In many Mediterranean Countries grapevine is one of the most economically and culturally important crop. As a woody perennial plant, grapevine is particularly sensitive to environmental stresses. Novel and sustainable strategies are urgently needed to maintain grapevine productivity in future climatic conditions. Objective of the project. In the last decade, microbiomes have surged as important players in the physiology of many biological systems. In this project, we aim at exploiting the natural endophytes biodiversity existing in grapevines cultivated in regions of the Mediterranean characterized by arid conditions, to investigate possible application to ameliorate grapevine resilience to drought stress. Methodology. Microbial endophyte consortia conferring the highest resistance to drought stress in traditional grapevine cultivars will be selected under controlled conditions and applied to sanitized grapevine plants, either by grafting or direct inoculation of culturable fraction Plant response will be characterized at physiological and molecular levels by a multidisciplinary approach to determine the mechanisms underlying the modulation of the grapevine response to drought due to microbiomes. Transcriptome, methylome and metabolome analysis will be correlated to the physiological characterization of plants, including optogenetical measurements of the stress hormone Abscisic Acid, Ca2+ homeostasis, photosynthesis, and stomatal conductance. Beneficial microbial associations will be identified by means of metagenomic approaches. By the end of the project, we will be able to offer new technological procedures (double grafting or direct inoculation) to produce commercial material enriched in beneficial endophytes that can be safely used in the field. The project outcome will be the identification of beneficial microbial consortia to be used in environmentally friendly agricultural practices thus increasing the sustainability of the system as a major challenge to face and overcome the problem of increasing water scarcity.