INTOMED develops novel, effective and sustainable tools that utilize (a) interactions between plants and soil-borne beneficial microbes and (b) natural key plant (metabolites and peptides) and bacterially-expressed RNA molecules to enhance the resistance of economically important Mediterranean crops, i.e. tomato, olive and citrus, to major agricultural arthropod pests and pathogens. Soil-borne beneficial microbes have long been recognized for their ability to improve plant growth and nutrition and prime the plant immune system against pathogens and herbivores in plants. We thus aim to first, assess the potential of selected marketed and laboratory-owned strains of beneficial microbes, including endophytes, for their ability to improve crop resistance to arthropods and pathogens and second, study the molecular mechanisms involved in promising microbe-plant-pest combinations with the aim to also identify plant secondary metabolites and peptides that mediate enhanced resistance and technically support future commercial biocontrol products. INTOMED also exploits the development of a GMO-free and effective pest control tool i.e. exogenous delivery of RNA molecules having the potential to trigger RNA interference (RNAi) against targeted pathogens/pests in both vegetables and fruit trees. Pilot demonstration trials, targeting end-users (farmers, SMEs) will assess promising beneficial microbes and plant molecules. In addition, INTOMED will increase public awareness of the nature of the proposed tools and analyse the impact of their acceptance. Our consortium includes 9 academic and industrial partners from Greece, Spain, France, Morocco, Portugal and Tunisia. INTOMED will generate new knowledge on plant-microbe-pest interactions and develop novel sustainable tools to prevent outbreaks of economically important pests and pathogens in the Mediterranean.

The overall objective of the project is to increase the efficiency, sustainability and competitiveness of the post-farming processing chain of organic citrus fruit, by intervening points of weakness and the unresolved problems of this supply chain. Consistently with the scope, specific objectives include: i) Reduction (from 30 to 0.5%) of losses caused by post-harvest rots during storage and transportation, by treating the fruits with non-toxic, eco-friendly substances and bio-products compatible with organic food as an alternative option to synthetic fungicides (innovative green technology) ii) raising of the quality standards of fresh fruits and juice by using molecular diagnostics (innovative biotechnology) for the detection of pathogenic quarantine fungi (zero tolerance) and mycotoxins (under detectable levels) and excluding fruits that do not comply with EU and EPPO phytopathological and toxicological standards; iii) extension of the shelf-life (from 40 to 45-50 days for oranges; from 60 to 70 days for lemons) of fresh fruit using biodegradable active biocoating and smart packaging; iv) application of smart technologies (ICT-based technologies and machine learning techniques) to reduce shipping times and optimize the delivery of fruits to the targeted markets (20% increase in shipment efficiency and exclusion of complaints or cuts by GDO; v) minimizing the waste (reduction up to 80%) of the industrial fruit transformation by recycling and exploiting the most of citrus pulp, the major by-product of juice and essence industry, by utilizing it as a raw material to produce a biodegradable and natural biocoating of fruit packaging, in accordance with the principles of circular economy and the standards of organic food.

IPM-4-Citrus aims to strengthen collaborations between academic and non-academic partners based in 3 European Member States (FR, GER, IT), 2 Associated Countries (Turkey and Tunisia) and 1 Third Country (Lebanon), in order to develop a new bio-pesticide active against citrus pests and scale it up from lab to market. The project’s research and innovation activities are based on a multidisciplinary approach, which aims at understanding and sensitising stakeholders about the health risk factors related to citrus pests and their treatment by chemical pesticides and developing an alternative Integrated Pest Management (IPM) approach based on biological control. Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) based bio pesticides occupy almost 97% of the world’s bio pesticide market and their use was estimated to exceed 30,000 tons. Despite this widespread use, the originality of Citrus-IPM is to focus on 2 promising, newly identified strains (Bt kurstaki BLB1 and LIP), which were shown to be more efficient than the commercial (Bt kurstaki HD1). In conjunction with validation through field tests, the project will pave the way for future commercial exploitation of a new biopesticide product by drawing up a feasibility study for future spin-off activities and/or new production lines in partner SMEs. Staff secondments and inter-sector and international mobilities between complementary partners will represent a unique opportunity to optimise bioproduction processes and obtain high added-value bioproducts, while building up the partners’ skills and reinforcing the training of early-stage researchers through knowledge sharing and networking. Inter-sectors mobility will bring SMEs and researchers to work conjointly on conditioning procedures for field tests, impact evaluation and product maturation/exploitation. The project will also adopt a concrete RRI approach by favouring public engagement and informal education through the different outreach activities aimed at a variety of target groups.