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.

SUPERB pursues the overall goal to create a lasting enabling environment for transformative change towards large-scale forest and forest landscape restoration, which empowers decision makers to take just and informed decisions for restoration of biodiversity, ecosystem services and carbon sequestration in a manner that minimises region specific trade-offs and maximises synergies between ecosystem services. SUPERB develops and synthesises a multidisciplinary, practical, and scientific restoration knowledge basis and makes it publicly available. In 12 large-scale demonstrators across Europe, we will showcase best practices responding to key forest restoration and adaptation challenges on some hundreds of hectares per demo and with the potential for immediate upscaling to over one million hectares in 10-15 years. For large scale restoration to be successful, many actors from different sectors and disciplines must behave synergistically and in a mutually reinforcing way. We will speed up transformative change and further upscaling through innovative stakeholder involvement across scales to ensure the favorability and uptake of the proposed approaches. A comprehensive multi-language online Forest Ecosystem Restoration Gateway will guide stakeholders to find answers to their restoration questions, advise them on how to deal with barriers and enablers and provide access to easily applicable and comprehensible tools and materials that support restoration, e.g., best practices for forest restoration or the development of scalability plans, a tree species selection application, an innovative funding guide, and much more. The Gateway will also host a restoration Marketplace, where market agents, e.g. potential funders and landowners, can agree on bids for restoration projects. SUPERB will boost and measure its impact through its extensive and systematically enlarged stakeholder communities and networks, to ensure the relevance of the project outputs and their positive uptake.