Providing food security in the face of climate change and increasingly frequent extreme heat and drought events is one of the greatest global challenges. Drought is the most influential environmental factor limiting crop yields for a growing world population and leading to significant economic losses. To safeguard agricultural production, it is crucial to develop high-yielding crops with improved water use efficiency. Oat (Avena sativa L.) is an emerging crop that offers significant benefits for human health and provides a nutrient-rich plant-based protein source with a low carbon footprint. However, oats are sensitive to drought and progress in breeding drought-resistant varieties, while urgently needed, is limited. The oat genome is characterised by its enormous size, high repeat content, and complex polyploid structure. Therefore, efforts to investigate complex agricultural traits such as drought stress resistance have long been hampered by the lack of genomics resources. Recently, a fully annotated reference genome sequence of Avena sativa became available, to which I contributed significantly, representing a fundamental breakthrough. RESIST will take on the challenging high-priority task of deciphering the molecular basis of drought stress resistance in oat, providing substantial solutions to secure yields of this emerging, healthy and versatile crop. To this end, RESIST will exploit innovations in plant genomics and in particular oat genetics, employ cutting-edge high-throughput phenotyping methods and establish gene editing protocols that provide an innovative basis for accelerated and targeted breeding of oats. RESIST provides the indispensable foundation for the development of better-performing oat varieties under drought conditions to secure oat yields as a sustainable source of a highly nutritious, healthy, protein-rich plant-based diet for billions of people.

D4AgEcol will show the potentials of digitalisation as enabler for agroecological farming systems in Europe based on available knowledge and actors' and stakeholders' co-innovation capacity . Partners from seven countries across a wide spectrum of pedoclimatic zones in Europe will assemble a holistic evaluation of digital tools and technologies. This will be based on indicators for agroecology, economic considerations and investigations about perceived benefits for user and stakeholder. Drivers, barriers and risks of digital technologies for a transformation towards agroecology will be identified. The results of this analysis will feed in national and European roadmaps for agroecology, indicating the need for adjusted policies and a technology research and innovation agenda.

The Legume Generation consortium will invest in innovation that boosts the breeding of legumes in Europe by combining the entrepreneurial focus of breeders with the broad inventiveness of the supporting research base. Six species-oriented breeder-led innovation communities will link practical breeding with the research-base in a transdisciplinary framework. They lead the innovation work and each is focused on the breeding of a single species or species type: soya bean (Glycine max); lupins (Lupinus spp); pea (Pisum sativum); lentil (Lens culinaris); phaseolus bean (Phaseolus spp. e.g., ‘common’ bean); and white and red clover (Trifolium repens and T. pratense). These are supported by the cross-project collection of intelligence on ideotype concepts, beneficial traits, a catalogue of legume species and cultivars, and breeding methods assembled in the Legume Generation Knowledge Centre; the production and validation of novel resources (genotypes, methods, and tools); screening, demonstration and testing of germplasm and new cultivars in different regions; training to support breeding gains in our innovation communities; governance and financial models, and business plans for inclusive plant breeding. All this will be supported by consortium internal and external dissemination and communications, including the extension of the European Legume Hub as a platform for sharing of knowledge. We currently run 43 breeding and pre-breeding programmes. We will give these a decisive boost through access to resources that accelerates the production of novel germplasm, innovating up to the point where newly bred germplasm and cultivars are proven on farm. Breeders will use the results to support expansion of legume production. Our innovation communities will be open to all relevant actors and provide a direct route for the dissemination of results to other users and interested stakeholders. Their sustainability beyond the life of the project will be supported by business plans.

The objective of GenTORE is to develop innovative genome-enabled selection and management tools to optimise cattle resilience and efficiency (R&E) in widely varying environments. These tools, incorporating both genetic and non-genetic variables, will be applicable across the full range of systems (beef, milk and mixed), and will thereby increase the economic, environmental and social sustainability of European cattle meat and milk production systems. To achieve this, GenTORE brings together: 1) multidisciplinary scientific expertise in genomics, environmental assessment, nutritional physiology, health management, precision livestock farming, mathematical modelling, and socio-economics; 2) partners and stakeholders representing breeding organisations, farm technology companies, farm and veterinary advisory services, and farm sectors (organic, grazing, etc.); and 3) a unique data basis including >1 million genotypes. This multi-actor team will develop tools for: multi-breed selection for R&E, characterisation of diverse farm environments, large-scale phenotyping of R&E using on-farm technology, on-farm management of breeding and culling decisions, and predicting the consequences for farm resilience of changing breeding and management. These tools are designed to be applicable under commercial conditions at the end of the project. They will allow increased use of the genomic diversity in cattle breeds, e.g. use of selective cross-breeding to best exploit the local production environment. They will also allow farm managers, their advisors, and policy-makers, to assess the relative importance of breeding for animal resilience vs breeding for efficiency, with respect to system resilience. As such GenTORE will not only enable the use of genomic information to facilitate predictive biology of efficiency- and resilience-related traits, but will also increase resilience of livestock production in the face of current and future challenges of climate change and food security.