In Europe, fruit production is essential as a supplier of food that is beneficial to public health and to provide value and jobs. It may also play an important role in agroecology transition. But currently, fruit production is very dependent on the use of phytosanitary products and vulnerable to climatic change (CC). Most cultivated varieties are susceptible to diseases and pests, and CC already has a significant impact on the phenology and regularity of production of important fruit species such as apple, peach and apricot. Emerging major agronomic issues for the fruit sector are thus related to input reduction and resilience to CC. The challenge is therefore to accelerate the transition to low-input, sustainable fruit production systems based on adapted and resilient plant material. In this context, the proposed project aims at organizing a consortium for preparing the submission to H2020 call SFS28B “Adding value to genetic resources”, and more specifically building a proposition for adding value to European Rosaceae fruit tree genetic resources (GR). An enormous reservoir of GR is available in cultivated species and wild relatives of fruit species. Those GR are scattered over Europe in various germplasm banks and numerous amatory associations. This reservoir is only scarcely used even though the scattering of germplasm collections over Europe can be seen as an opportunity to monitor and characterize accessions adaptation in diverse and changing environments. Indeed, fruit species have to face multiple sources of stress generated by CC and biotic constraints due to the duration of their cultivated life span (usually a few decades). However, a better use of RG would require that homogeneous and accurate phenotyping and genotyping processes are developed and shared by conservators, curators, geneticists, breeders, nonprofessional organizations and growers. This project will be based on a consortium involved in conservation and characterization of GR throughout Europe that aims at improving their harmonization, exploration and use in different environment, cultivation systems and usages. For this, the project will pay attention to the diversity of institutions to associate to the initial consortium and to demonstration and dissemination activities. By gathering academic skills, private breeders and companies and public associations, the consortium will ambition breakthrough in the characterization of new traits related to biotic and abiotic constraints and adaptation to diverse environments. The project will include actions to: - Characterize existing germplasm collections, as well as wild related germplasm, for new traits, making use of new methodologies, including “omis” and modelling, that will be shared among partners. - Enrich collections of domesticated material with wild related species, when necessary. - Enrich, give access to and share existing and new phenotypic, genotypic and ‘omics’ information collected during the project, through existing databases organized under SFS28-A. - Implement innovative approaches to unravel genes/QTLs for characters of interest in Rosaceeae fruit species, integrate omics-derived and new biotechnology information. - Address methodological questions related to trait combination and introgression of new desirable traits revealed in collections or in the wild compartment into elite material, in accordance with user’s needs. - Generate pre-breeding materials These actions are expected to reinforce and galvanize European network involved in Rosaceae species GR for adding value to and increasing the utilization of the preserved germplasm.

The project proposes to set up and disseminate an original training on agroecology at the European level in order to develop skills for actors of sustainable agricultural development. Agroecology, providing new paradigms for management of natural resources, challenges the interfaces between productive activities, ecological systems and societies. Operating the transition from classical towards agroecological agriculture implies for agronomical academics and professionals of agriculture and development to obtain new knowledge and skills at the interface between disciplines and at the interface between sciences and practices that disciplinary and current academic training in Europe cannot yet afford. To reach these goals, we propose an innovative training founded on interdisciplinary and action-based approaches and on the added value of crossing a diversity of expertise between partners from Northern and Southern Europe. With this objective we have structured the teaching team with partner groups from different research, educational and professional institutions involved in agroeocology in Europe, and chosen representatives focusing on the diversity of agroeocological topics, agricultural and cultural contexts and scientific frameworks. Practically speaking, the training project is structured around a summer school conceived to develop the abilities of students in formalizing agroecological problematics and finding their solutions while taking into account the technical, ecological and social dimensions. The teaching method is based on problem (work on study cases) and collective based learning processes crossing disciplines and academic/professional points of view guided with targeted knowledge inputs (conferences, conceptual and methodological frameworks) along with direct dialogue with stakeholders (through field trips or presentations of case studies). Each year a “working-group” of partners will be in charge of building and implementing the annual session of the school through a specific topic framework. With this process, the training school will be enriched each year by the collective work of partners with new knowledge inputs as well as teaching methods. Each year we will capitalize the yearly production of the school, such as conference building, bibliographies, reports on case studies, and postcasts on stakeholders' media. These products constitute the material pool to build the virtual expansion of the school and operate a large scale dissemination of concepts and products of the school throughout Europe and at the same time enrich the pool of potential participants (students, stakeholders). All the material from the summer school session will be available from the website of the project. Four multiplier events (two Field Trips and two seminars) will disseminate the concepts and methodes of the projects.

Due to a growing world population and changing consumption patterns, demand for animal products is expected to increase. Ruminant-based systems have the potential advantage of using resources non edible by humans and converting these into high quality human food. However, the emergence of intensive ruminant production systems, relying on increasing use of concentrate feeds, with food value, and the related increase in land abandonment in traditional grassland regions, has increased scrutiny in respect of the sustainability of EU livestock productions. Moreover the consumers’ point of view, the social acceptability of cattle products is being questioned with regards to food quality and safety, animal welfare and the competition between feed and food. To face these drawbacks, we hypothesize that cattle farming systems which rely mainly on grasslands and agro-industrial resources non-edible by humans are more or can be designed to be more sustainable than specialized systems which use feedstuffs that could also be directly used as food or that was produced at the detriment of food production. In addition such systems would greatly contribute to circular economy. Our measure of sustainability includes, environmental and social dimensions as well as economic perspectives taking into account the services delivered by these systems. Our proposal focuses on beef production systems as they are increasingly questioned by society. To test this, actual and potential performances of systems representative of Europe will be compared, mobilizing multidisciplinary and multi-actors approaches to co-define 1-beef system types, 2-the set of sustainability indicators to be mobilized, 3-potential scenarios of evolution for more sustainable systems. These scenarios will be evaluated and, furthermore, suitable incentive measures to enhance their implementation will be tested and, when relevant, proposed. The dissemination of results will be facilitated throughout this bottom-up approach.

The main objective of EO4AGRI is to catalyze the evolution of the European capacity for improving operational agriculture monitoring from local to global levels based on information derived from Copernicus satellite observation data and through exploitation of associated geospatial and socio-economic information services. EO4AGRI assists the implementation of the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) with special attention to the CAP2020 reform, to requirements of Paying Agencies, and for the Integrated Administration and Control System (IACS) processes. EO4AGRI works with farmers, farmer associations and agro-food industry on specifications of data-driven farming services with focus on increasing the utilization of EC investments into Copernicus Data and Information Services (DIAS). EO4AGRI addresses global food security challenges coordinated within the G20 Global Agricultural Monitoring initiative (GEOGLAM) capitalizing on Copernicus Open Data as input to the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEW-NET). EO4AGRI assesses information about land-use and agricultural service needs and offers to financial investors and insurances and the potential added value of fueling those services with Copernicus information. The EO4AGRI team consists of 11 organizations, complementary in their roles and expertise, covering a good part of the value-chain with a significant relevant networking capital as documented in numerous project affiliations and the formal support declarations collected for EO4AGRI. All partners show large records of activities either in Copernicus RTD, governmental functions, or downstream service operations. The Coordinator of EO4AGRI is a major industrial player with proven capacities to lead H2020 projects. The EO4AGRI project methodology is a combination of community building; service gap analysis; technology watch; strategic research agenda design and policy recommendations; dissemination (incl. organization of hackathons).