WiseFood aims at developing smart digital applications that will empower citizens to make healthier and more sustainable food choices. It will leverage state-of-the-art Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques and tools, combining the factual knowledge representation capacity of Knowledge Graphs with the natural language understanding, generation, and reasoning abilities of Large Language Models. These will allow us to build novel tools that democratize access to reliable food-related information and go beyond the current levels of personalization and contextualization offered by existing food recommenders. The developed applications will be user-friendly and integrate seamlessly into daily life, not requiring specialized IT skills or devices. Our goal is to bridge the divide between knowledge, intention, and action with end-to-end intelligent solutions. A human-in-the-loop approach with food domain experts, including nutritionists, will be applied to ensure alignment with national policies and guidelines. Living Labs implementing a multi-actor approach are foreseen to co-create the envisioned solutions. These will take place in three different countries, Ireland, Hungary, and Slovenia, with the latter being an already established and operational short food supply chain Living Lab. The outcomes of WiseFood will enhance the overall food ecosystem, by promoting healthier dietary habits, reducing the ecological footprint of food consumption, and fostering a culture of well-informed and eco-conscious citizens.

Widening countries lag behind the European average in Research & Innovation investment and scientific excellence; the domain of Digital Agriculture (DA) is one prominent example. Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) of Widening countries, like Greece and Serbia, can play a central role in addressing this issue, but need support for achieving excellence in research and education in the DA domain. HEIs in Belgium have gained significant experience by establishing an ecosystem that fosters close collaboration among HEIs, competence centers, Digital Innovation Hubs, and industry, leveraging advanced digital technologies for the benefit of citizens, business, and scientific advancement. In this light, TALLHEDA will build a new long-term Alliance for DA between agricultural HEIs from Widening countries with leading non-widening agricultural universities, and local and international stakeholders. TALLHEDA Alliance will contribute to raising the critical mass of highly skilled scientists and to establishing liaisons with surrounding ecosystems, in order to foster the Quadruple Helix of innovation in Widening countries. The path to excellence will be paved with a portfolio of multi-actor, inter-sector and international complementary actions to support students, early-stage and experienced researchers, and academic staff of the Widening HEIs. This will be achieved through collaboration, complementary top-level expertise of all partners, access to cutting-edge infrastructure, staff mobility, and joint educational and research activities. The partners have an established scientific reputation in DA and are committed to making TALLHEDA a success. In the long term, Widening HEIs will be one step closer to reforming their institutions in terms of content and quality of educational courses, pedagogical and management practices, and research and innovation capacity, raising the critical mass of highly skilled scientists needed for digital transition in agriculture across Europe.

dRural overall goal it to co-develop and implement a digital solution that delivers multiple services to rural citizens while creating opportunities economic growth and quality of life improvements. Then, to ensure the successful exploitation and sustainability after the project’s lifetime and its replication in other European territories. As such, our aspiration is to become the service marketplace of reference for European rural areas. dRural will build a service network for rural areas and communities based on four rural regions of Europe, namely: Extremadura (ES), Dubrovnik-Neretva County (HR) and Region Gelderland Midden (NL). Each of these settings are called regional demonstrators. The solution building will follow agile methodologies and ensure end-users co-creation and validation in each regional demonstrator. Besides, dRural will be developed with a 'by-design' approach to ethics, privacy, and data protection. An internet coverage optimization in the demonstrators will be done to guarantee a smooth deployment. Then, the solution will be set up in each region, guaranteeing its personalization and customization to the regional needs, and integrating with the local service providers. In parallel, an ecosystem of relevant players surrounding the dRural solution will be created in each region by identifying the key stakeholders, current problems and designing a value proposition for each of them. The ecosystem building exercise will be supported by an open call in each demonstrator leveraging financial support to third parties to incentivize the solution take up and expand the ecosystem of players involved. This will offer opportunities for entrepreneurs by promoting new market openings allowing also smaller and newer players to capture value. An evaluation of usage and impacts will be performed to ensure on-going support in the region after the project completionend.

SUNFUSION endeavors to comprehensively address a novel process of microalgae and oleaginous yeasts conversion into shipping and aviation biofuels, by advancing state-of-the-art core technologies: (i) innovative PBR and open raceway ponds for microalgae and yeasts cultivation and optimization; (ii) a concentrated solar thermal (CST)-coupled continuous hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) reactor with solar energy covering the thermal needs of the process; (iii) a solar-aided thermal energy storage (TES) system which at later stages will be fully integrated to the overall process; (iv) hydrotreatment units to obtain the final, advanced sustainable biofuels; (v) recovery of gaseous and aqueous streams from HTL and synergistic cultivations of microalgae and yeasts that will be recycled to the microalgae cultivation leading to a zero emission and zero waste process. HTL is a thermochemical process used for the production of sustainable biofuels from the depolymerization and repolymerization of highly moist organic biomass, having the inherent advantage of avoiding the cost-intensive part of biomass drying. These points will introduce high-risk/high-return novelties that will play an impactful role in forwarding the process subcomponents to TRL 4. At least 7 L of biocrude from microalgae and 1 L from yeasts are planned to be produced and upgraded. A testing period of above 12 months will take place under on-sun conditions at temperatures exceeding 350oC, with the solar-to-biocrude energy efficiency target set to exceed 50%, which is an ambitious number that will allow the sustainable transformation of solar energy to energy carriers in the form of biofuels. Finally, an overall process assessment will take place to evaluate the technology in terms of technical, economic and environmental aspects. The visionary concept beyond SUNFUSION project envisages the integration of the main components of the process in a mobile platform that will be operational in off-grid places.

The most important challenge in European agriculture is the cost and scarcity of labour. Robots have replaced labour in several sectors of the economy. Agricultural robots have not yet reached widespread acceptance. The vision of ROBS4CROPS is an agricultural sector where robots will replace humans in all heavy and unpleasant work! From a technical point of view, agricultural robots do not reach their potential because they are used as stand-alone units rather than as part of a complete, innovative robotic system. From a non-technical point of view, agricultural robots do not fit well with current farming practices and agricultural standards and are not supported by an ecosystem of stakeholders. ROBS4CROPS will tackle technical challenges by creating a robotic farming solution that consists of three elements: smart implements, autonomous vehicles, and the farming controller. Existing agricultural implements and tractors will be upgraded so that they can function, together with existing agricultural robots, as parts of a robotic system. Development and testing will take place in real farming environments (real operating conditions), in four countries, in iterative cycles, and in close collaboration with stakeholders. ROBS4CROPS will tackle non-technical challenges by using existing agricultural standards, by utilizing existing machinery (thus lowering the initial investment needed), and by addressing the lack of maintenance, insurance, financing and training. Compliance with regulations, robo-ethics and socio-economic impact will be explicitly addressed. Robotics offers an opportunity to develop novel business models. Building the ecosystem for agricultural robotics will take place iteratively, in parallel with technical development. The complete robotic system (technical and non-technical) will be demonstrated at scale in pilots in four European countries.