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.