Europe urgently needs to find pathways towards agroecological transition of agroecosystems in support to food security, climate change resilience, biodiversity and soil carbon stocks restoration. In PHENET, the European Research Infrastructures (RI) on plant phenotyping (EMPHASIS), ecosystems experimentation (AnaEE), long-term observation (eLTER) and data management and bioinformatics (ELIXIR) will join their forces to co-develop, with a diversity of innovative companies, new tools and methods - meant to contribute to new RI services - for the identification of future-proofed combinations of species, genotypes and management practices in front of the most likely climatic scenarios across Europe. Ambitioning to go beyond current highly instrumented but often spatially and temporally limited RI installations, PHENET derived services will allow wide access to enlarged sources of in-situ phenotypic and environmental data thanks to (i) new AI-based multi (agroecology-related) traits multi-sensors devices (ii) to unleashed access to high resolution Earth Observation data connected to ground based data, (iii) FAIR data support for connection with (iv) new generation of predictive modeling solutions encompassing AI and digital twins. Developments will be challenged by and implemented in a series of eight Use Cases covering a large range of agroecosystems but also of ecosystems to demonstrate portability of solutions. Several of these Use Cases will mobilize on-farm data. A large effort will be devoted to training RI staff and beyond through a sustained collection of training material fed by experts. Outreaching activities will aim at enlarging the range of RI users. PHENET will not only strengthen RI but will also have major impact on the development of innovative companies on phenotyping, envirotyping and precision agriculture as well as on the emergence of climate smart crop varieties and innovative practices fitted to climate change and agroecological transition.

Nitrogen (N) is a vital nutrient for plant growth. However, the intensive use of N fertilizers in agriculture, whereby only 30-50% of applied N is taken up by crops, has led to significant environmental challenges. Impactful losses occur through nitrate leaching to the groundwater, leading to its contamination, and through nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions, a long-lasting greenhouse gas. Acknowledging the need for a coordinated effort among the four helixes of innovation (i.e. research, society, industry and policy) to unlock the necessary efforts for monitoring N fluxes and action towards reducing N losses and increasing N use efficiency, NitroScope has two major ambitions: a) improving scientific knowledge for pedo-climatic regions getting both simple region-specific emissions factors and model-based decision support and b) bringing the knowledge to land managers so that mitigation will happen. To achieve this, NitroScope will improve N flux monitoring through 125 sites spread over at least 10 pedo-climatic regions using improved proximal sensors for high throughput continuous nitrate quantification, remote sensing, and better methodology to adequately account for the variability of in-the-field N2O emissions. The data will be gathered in a database hosted on a cloud to facilitate reporting and will be used to determine region-specific emission factors and provide model-based decision support with reduced uncertainties. Based on this, improved N management and conservation solutions will be assessed, including variable rate N fertilization and crop residue management. NitroScope will further use transdisciplinary methodology, including developing 2 farm management add-ons, to inform and engage land managers to actively contribute to monitoring and managing N fluxes in Europe while improving agricultural yield and quality. Finally, this will result in a more precise EU N budget estimation and future scenarios to support decision-making.

Biodiversity protection and restoration are critical for maintaining the ecological balance and ensuring the planet's sustainability. In the absence of sustainable management and protection of natural resources, the negative impacts of climate change and other environmental issues will only increase. Private investment can be a critical tool that has the potential to play a transformative role in financing conservation and restoration efforts, as public financing alone may be insufficient to address the scale of these challenges. By activating innovative sustainable finance solutions and incorporating technological advances within the field of geospatial analytics, the project can attract private investment in a way that benefits the environment and secures investors’ confidence. BIO-CAPITAL project is going to develop and implement an interdisciplinary research and innovation endeavour by combining actions in the three fields of (i) Biodiversity protection and restoration, (ii) biodiversity-friendly Financing mechanisms and (iii) advanced Space Technology. The implementation will involve three key steps to leverage innovation. First, BIO-CAPITAL will analyse, understand and learn from UCs. Second, it will elaborate, monitor, and demonstrate through UCs. Finally, it will co-develop, implement and amplify back to the UCs. BIO-CAPITAL will engage stakeholders through iterative processes, in order to reach shared views on the aforementioned three stages and how they can be effectively combined to increase financial flows for biodiversity protection, restoration and sustainable utilisation.