In a world grappling with complex global challenges such as population growth, climate change, and environmental degradation, ensuring security, sustainability, and food safety is paramount. Agricultural practices and food production processes are integral to public health, economic stability, and societal well-being. However, conventional approaches have often operated in isolation, limiting our understanding and hindering scalability. The WHEATWATCHER initiative seeks to break these barriers by uniting soil health monitoring, plant health assessment, and food traceability through a cutting-edge digital soil monitoring system. This system assesses soil nutrition, chemical, and biological factors impacting wheat grains from field growth to flour production, spanning multiple European regions. By actively involving stakeholders, including farmers, mill proprietors, and policymakers, WHEATWATCHER tailors its solution to practical needs. It leverages diverse sensor technologies, advanced machine learning models, and automated mapping techniques to boost efficiency and scalability. A Decision Support System and cloud platform ensure accessible insights. At its core, a machine learning model seamlessly integrates technologies, creating a cohesive solution that bridges the gaps between soil health, plant health, and food traceability. WHEATWATCHER aims to foster harmony between sensing technologies, data processing, and stakeholder engagement, revolutionizing comprehensive monitoring.

Europe urgently needs to find pathways towards agroecological transition of agroecosystems in support to food security, climate change resilience, biodiversity and soil carbon stocks restoration. In PHENET, the European Research Infrastructures (RI) on plant phenotyping (EMPHASIS), ecosystems experimentation (AnaEE), long-term observation (eLTER) and data management and bioinformatics (ELIXIR) will join their forces to co-develop, with a diversity of innovative companies, new tools and methods - meant to contribute to new RI services - for the identification of future-proofed combinations of species, genotypes and management practices in front of the most likely climatic scenarios across Europe. Ambitioning to go beyond current highly instrumented but often spatially and temporally limited RI installations, PHENET derived services will allow wide access to enlarged sources of in-situ phenotypic and environmental data thanks to (i) new AI-based multi (agroecology-related) traits multi-sensors devices (ii) to unleashed access to high resolution Earth Observation data connected to ground based data, (iii) FAIR data support for connection with (iv) new generation of predictive modeling solutions encompassing AI and digital twins. Developments will be challenged by and implemented in a series of eight Use Cases covering a large range of agroecosystems but also of ecosystems to demonstrate portability of solutions. Several of these Use Cases will mobilize on-farm data. A large effort will be devoted to training RI staff and beyond through a sustained collection of training material fed by experts. Outreaching activities will aim at enlarging the range of RI users. PHENET will not only strengthen RI but will also have major impact on the development of innovative companies on phenotyping, envirotyping and precision agriculture as well as on the emergence of climate smart crop varieties and innovative practices fitted to climate change and agroecological transition.

Crop wild relatives (CWR) are wild plant taxa closely related to a crop. They represent an important source of genetic diversity for the improvement of agronomic traits. In the context of the One Health Initiative, temperate fruit trees are essential for human nutrition and health, yet CWR resources have hitherto been underused. Moreover, fruit tree long lifespan and a current production dominated by a few cultivars make them particularly vulnerable to the effects of global changes. To address this challenge, the FRUITDIV project will monitor, characterise, use, and conserve the diversity of emblematic fruit tree CWR, with a particular emphasis on Malus, Pyrus and Prunus. To better characterise the genetic and phenotypic diversity of CWR fruit trees and identify favourable traits for future introgression into cultivars, FRUITDIV will use a combination of floristic, ethnogeography and population genomics on genebanks and historical European hotspots of diversity. We will then develop new multiomics-based breeding strategies that combine marker-assisted introgression for traits of interest (e.g. resilience, resistance to pests and diseases, fruit quality) with pangenomic prediction and a reduction of CWR-associated genetic load. In addition to breeding programs, FRUITDIV will also work with networks of farmers and associations to help characterise CWR progeny in various pedo-climatic conditions in Europe. An European-wide online platform that provides genotyping and phenotyping data for free will be implemented to promote the use of CWR genitors by breeders and farmers and help disseminate plant material of interest for various usages and cultivation systems. Overall, the FRUITDIV multi-actor approach involving geneticists, forestry officers, germplasm curators, farmers and citizens, will foster the in- and ex-situ conservation of CWR and promote sustainable agricultural practices across Europe.

The aim of the INVITE project is to improve both efficiency of variety testing and the information available to stakeholders on variety performance under a range of production conditions and biotic and abiotic stresses. This will be exemplified on ten selected species representing the main features of propagation, food and feed uses, and having an important breeding activity at EU level. The ultimate goal is to help the valorisation and the promotion of varieties that are more adapted to sustainable management practices, and more resilient to climate change. The most critical issues to be addressed for each crop have been selected thanks to an internal survey during the building phase of the project taking into account the wide experience and background of the partners of the INVITE consortium. To reach its overall objective, INVITE will identify bioindicators associated with plant resource use efficiency, sustainability and resilience. It will develop new phenotyping and genotyping tools to measure them. INVITE will implement models and statistical tools allowing to predict variety performance under a range of environments and crop management practices, while considering the economic return for farmers. The tools and methods will be made available for examinations offices (including CPVO) and post registration organisations to improve efficiency and accuracy of DUS and variety performance testing and to integrate sustainability criteria. INVITE will also propose organisational innovations to improve the management of variety testing networks and reference collections. It will propose guidelines to policy makers for including new traits and improving harmonisation of DUS and VCU at EU-level, and for the testing of heterogeneous plant reproductive material. The outputs of the project will be available to all the relevant stakeholders thanks to an active and open dissemination policy; particularly by delivering a Decision Support System for Variety Choice.

The main objective of EO4AGRI is to catalyze the evolution of the European capacity for improving operational agriculture monitoring from local to global levels based on information derived from Copernicus satellite observation data and through exploitation of associated geospatial and socio-economic information services. EO4AGRI assists the implementation of the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) with special attention to the CAP2020 reform, to requirements of Paying Agencies, and for the Integrated Administration and Control System (IACS) processes. EO4AGRI works with farmers, farmer associations and agro-food industry on specifications of data-driven farming services with focus on increasing the utilization of EC investments into Copernicus Data and Information Services (DIAS). EO4AGRI addresses global food security challenges coordinated within the G20 Global Agricultural Monitoring initiative (GEOGLAM) capitalizing on Copernicus Open Data as input to the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEW-NET). EO4AGRI assesses information about land-use and agricultural service needs and offers to financial investors and insurances and the potential added value of fueling those services with Copernicus information. The EO4AGRI team consists of 11 organizations, complementary in their roles and expertise, covering a good part of the value-chain with a significant relevant networking capital as documented in numerous project affiliations and the formal support declarations collected for EO4AGRI. All partners show large records of activities either in Copernicus RTD, governmental functions, or downstream service operations. The Coordinator of EO4AGRI is a major industrial player with proven capacities to lead H2020 projects. The EO4AGRI project methodology is a combination of community building; service gap analysis; technology watch; strategic research agenda design and policy recommendations; dissemination (incl. organization of hackathons).