Showroom

EPPN2020 is a research infrastructure project funded by Horizon 2020 Programme of the EU that will provide European public and private scientific sectors with access to a wide range of state-of-the-art plant phenotyping facilities, techniques and methods, and help boost the exploitation of genetic and genomic resources available for crop improvement that represents a major scientific challenge for this coming decade. EPPN2020 specifically aims to facilitate the community progressing across the whole phenotyping pipeline, involving sensors and imaging techniques, data analysis in relation to environmental conditions, data organization and storage, data interpretation in a biological context and meta-analyses of experiments carried out on different organs at different scales of plant organization.

Specifically EPPN2020 includes:

Access to 31 key plant phenotyping installations
Joint research activities to develop: i) novel technologies and methods for environmental and plant measurments, ii) tools for statistical analysis and iii) a European plant phenotyping information systems
Networking activities to increase integration between phenotyping facilities and users within and outside of EPPN2020

EC funding : 9,999,999.50€ (Budget/total costs 10 220 249€)
Duration : 4 years
Start : 1st May 2017
Coordinator : Dr François Tardieu francois.tardieu@inra.fr
Project's manager : Bénédicte Ferreira benedicte.ferreira@inra.fr

Website : https://eppn2020.plant-phenotyping.eu/

VetBioNet : Veterinary Biocontained facility Network for excellence in animal infectiology research and experimentation

Objectives

The VetBioNet (Veterinary Biocontained research facility Network) project involves the contribution of two INRA research units and three INRA platforms1 and constitutes an international network of 30 partners from the academic and private sector. The project’s principal objectives are to reinforce the cooperation between Europe’s leading high-containment research infrastructures, to provide access to the high-end research facilities of the network, and to further improve the technical standard of the services provided.
VetBioNet is funded by the EC Horizon 2020 INFRAIA program allocating 10 Mio € for a project duration of 5 years (2017-21). This EC funding instrument specifically supports advanced infrastructure communities. The VetBioNet network has attained an advanced degree of cooperation through the implementation of the previous infrastructure project NADIR (Network for Animal Diseases and Infectiology Research, 2009-2013)2 which has already assembled 12 of the present consortium members.

The integrating activities of the VetBioNet infrastructure project are threefold:
- Joint Research Activities (JRAs) of the project partners related to animal infectious diseases and their prevention and control
- Networking Activities (NAs) to foster the cooperation between project partners and to forge cooperative relationships with other European or international research initiatives, industrial stakeholders, international organizations and policy makers.
- Transnational Access Activities (TNAs) – that is to say, providing access to the high-containment facilities and technical resources of the consortium. This free-of-charge access will be provided to researchers or enterprises proposing a sound project related to specific epizootic and zoonotic diseases.

EC funding : 10 000 000 €

Duration : 5 years

Start : 1st March 2017

Coordinators : Frédéric Lantier - frederic.lantier@inra.fr and Sascha Trapp, sascha.trapp@inra.fr

Project manager : Joselle Latchoumia – joselle.latchoumia@inra.fr

Website : www.vetbionet.eu/

eucleg EUCLEG : Breeding forage and grain legumes to increase EU’s and China’s protein self-sufficiency

Objectives

EUCLEG aims to reduce Europe and China’s dependency on protein imports by developing efficient breeding strategies for the legume crops of major economic importance in human food and animal feed. The objective is to improve diversification, crop productivity, yield stability and protein quality of both forage (alfalfa and red clover) and grain (pea, faba bean and soybean) legumes. Using diverse and extensive genetic resources and taking advantage of advanced molecular tools, EUCLEG aims to identify and develop the best genetic resources, phenotyping methods and molecular tools to breed legume varieties with improved performance under biotic and abiotic stresses in the representative European and Chinese agro-ecological areas. The potential for new uses of forage species for human nutrition will be explored. Searchable databases will be developed or built to host passport, agronomic and genetic data facilitating exchanges and use of genetic resources. The evaluation of genetic resources in multi-site trials will give keys to broaden the breeding material and extend agro-ecological adaptation. The genetic architecture of key breeding traits will be analysed using association studies in order to identify molecular markers related to phenotypic traits. Finally, genomic selection strategies will be assessed for their potential to improve genetic progress. Practical tools for genotyping, data management and calculation will be provided to breeders to implement marker-assisted selection and genomic selection leading to the creation of new varieties in the long-term. The partnership gathered in EUCLEG, combining public institutes and private companies of Europe and China, guaranties the transfer of knowledge from research to seed industry.

EC funding : 5 000 000 €

Duration : 4 years

Start : September 1st 2017

Coordinator : Bernadette Julier - bernadette.julier@inra.fr

Project manager : Cloé Paul-Victor cloe.paul-victor@inra.fr

Website : http://www.eucleg.eu/

SolACE Logo RGB SolACE : Solutions for improving Agroecosystem and Crop Efficiency for water and nutrient use

Objectives

SolACE's overarching goal is to help European agriculture facing the challenge to deal with more frequent combined limitations of water and nutrients in the coming decades, through the design of novel crop genotypes and agroecosystem management innovations to improve water and nutrient (i.e. N and P) use efficiency. To achieve this goal, SolACE will focus its activities on three major European crops - potato, bread and durum wheat - and will identify the (i) optimum combinations of above- and below-ground traits for improving resource use efficiency, (ii) best-performing genotypes under combined water and N or P stresses and (iii) novel practices that make better use of plant-plant and plant-microbe interactions to access water, N and P resources in conventional, organic and conservation agriculture. SolACE will implement a double interactive innovation loop, based on agroecosystem management and breeding strategies, and will imply the engagement of diverse end-users, across the production chain, from farmers and farm advisors to NGOs, SMEs and larger industries in the agri-business sector, through the SolACE consortium and a range of stakeholders' events. The tested innovations will include crop genotype mixtures, legume-based crop rotations and cover crops, microbial inoculants, as well as improved decision support systems and hybrids or products from genomic selection and participatory evolutionary breeding schemes. SolACE will implement complementary approaches, from data mining, modelling, phenotyping in high throughput platforms and field conditions, to experiments in research stations and farmers' networks in contrasted pedo-climatic zones. Through the co-design and co-assessment with the end-users of the selected novel breeding and management strategies to increase the overall system resource use efficiency, the findings of SolACE will be deemed acceptable and readily available for dissemination to a broad spectrum of stakeholders, including policy-makers.

EC funding : 6 000 000 €

Duration : 5 years

Start : May 1st 2017

Coordinator : Philippe Hinsinger - philippe.hinsinger@inra.fr

Project manager : Lise Vedel - lise.vedel@inra.fr

Website : http://www.solace-eu.net/