Fresh water availability for agriculture in the Dutch coastal area is limited and under pressure of climate-change. AGRICOAST aims to enhance the fresh water availability by means of various technological innovations and management solutions; make optimal use of both current and enhanced water resources for agricultural crop production; and support the societal transition towards climate-adaptive agriculture, based on evaluation of existing and newly designed interventions and governance. By means of design-based research, the uptake of the developed water management and crop production innovations is facilitated to pave the way to self-sufficient and climate(-change) robust agriculture in the Dutch coastal region.

Het budget voor routemanagement 2021/2022 zal ingezet worden voor - Coördinerende activiteiten van de trekker van de NWA-route, zoals het verzorgen van contacten met NWA en NWO, het organiseren van de jaarlijkse NWA-call / NWA-aanvraag Kleine Projecten, het organiseren van intern overleg met de trekkers van de gamechangers, overall coördinatie communicatie-activiteiten; - 2x netwerkbijeenkomsten voor verdieping en netwerkvorming van Gamechangers. Deze bijeenkomsten zullen life plaatsvinden in 2022; 2x voorbereiding van de netwerkbijeenkomst via een voorstudie waarin in beeld wordt gebracht wat er de afgelopen jaren aan nieuwe projecten is gerealiseerd op het thema van de Gamechanger, en interviews zullen worden gehouden met relevante stakeholders; - Ondersteuning door een senior - en junior communicatie specialist bij het realiseren van diverse communicatie-uitingen.

Ghana knows temporal shortage of fresh (fruit) vegetables, leading to high prices for the poor and hence under-consumption. Also the use of pesticides and poor post-harvest hygiene causes much concern for consumers, leading to again lower consumption. Over the years, open field cultivation has failed to give a response to the perennial problem of shortage of fresh vegetables. Protected horticulture, enables economically and environmentally sustainable production through more and cheaper vegetables, generation of employment, and through the lower use of chemical crop protection agents. The project therefore intends to achieve improvement and enlargement of protected horticulture through data sharing and technology improvement in collaboration with growers. Subsequently the project addresses post-harvest challenges in poor communities by collaborating with local (female) market managers on data collection on quality decline and best-practice sharing. These activities lead to greater availability of fresh (fruit) vegetables for the urban poor in Ghana during the year.

Two experiments on dynamic spacing and FR light on fruit quality yield in indoor tomato cultivation were completed. An expert survey about current and future sustainability perception of urban farming systems (incl. vertical farms) was conducted. Three experiments to determine effects of monochromatic light on lettuce growth and development were conducted. Compact architecture, fast-growing and other traits were observed and quantified by phenotyping of vertical farming tomato plants. We have identified the developmental regulation of tomatoes grown under VF condition by transcriptome profiling of the shoot apical meristem. Key metabolites influencing VF tomatoes’ flavor and quality were detected by metabolomics.

Plant breeders improve crops by incorporating traits from wild relatives into cultivars, using crosses, leading to introgression of resistances to (a)biotic stresses. Although breeders know for these crosses their starting material and which progeny they desire, they have no control over recombination positions. Therefore, they generate large populations, discarding >99% of these progenies. Another difficulty is that inversions in chromosomes hardly recombine. If a resistance gene is located in an inversion, it is impossible to remove unwanted genes -leading to linkage drag- from the inversion by breeding. I aim at solving these issues by targeted recombination at predefined chromosomal positions in somatic cells. For this purpose, I start with a heterozygous plant, carrying the desired resistance gene surrounded by linkage drag. The plant carries also the homologous ‘elite’ chromosome with the non-functional resistance allele. Then, I make a targeted DNA-break in the non-functional allele, using CRISPR-Cas. The plant will repair this DNA-break by either non-homologous end joining, possibly leading to a mutation, or by homology-directed repair (HDR). During HDR, when the plant uses the resistance gene as template for repair, a targeted introgression into the elite background can be obtained, replacing the non-functional by the functional gene, even in case of an inversion. I aim at influencing the frequency and size of these local introgressions. This approach enables breeders to introduce resistance genes from wild cultivars, preventing linkage drag, even from large inversions, thus removing the necessity of backcrosses. This is an innovative approach, supporting durable plant production.