Decarbonising & reducing aviation dependence on fossil fuel requires biofuels. BIO4A will produce at least kt of sustainable biojet for its use in aviation at commercial scale for accelerating its deployment within the aviation sector, increasing their attractiveness and contributing to the achievement of the EU targets. BIO4A targets HEFA pathway from wastes, aiming to move the full value chain from TLR 6 to 7. BIO4A will demonstrate the full value chain, enabling a production capacity of 2-300 kt/y of biojet in a First Of A Kind new biorefinery in France. The fuel will be distributed using the existing infrastructures and conventional aircraft fuelling systems for commercial flights. Special attention will be directed to the supply of sustainable feedstock, focusing on waste streams (UCO). In parallel, long-term R&D work will address marginal land in EU MED (low ILUC biofuels). Relevant environmental (inc. GHG and energy balance), economic and social data (inc. health and safety issues, impacts and benefits) will be assessed against targets. Since the current main barrier to the commercial production of biojet is the price gap, BIO4A will explicitly address performance and cost targets vs. relevant key performance indicators. The final goal is to prove the business case, identifying potential issues of public acceptance, market or regulatory risks and barriers (feedstock, technological, business, process) along the entire value chain, taking advantage of previous projects and proposing potential mitigation solutions. Offtake agreements have been signed with KLM and Airfrance. Additional off-take agreements could also be signed to open the participation to more airlines. Regulatory framework is also limiting today the development of the sector and an additional goal is recommendations to policies makers. The proposal will be defined at EU/National level, involving the major sector stakeholders and opening with a profitable dialogue with Member States and the EC.

CARINA is built on a multi-actor consortium and participative decision-making process through mutual learning, transparent communication, and inclusive multi-perspectives and transdisciplinary engagement. From the proposal clearly emerges the importance of social innovation as the nerve center for the evolution of the whole project. Nine Lighthouses, 5 Living Labs, and 9 Policy Innovation Labs will be established across Europe playing a leading role in the co-creation of CARINA innovation actions. CARINA focuses on new sustainable and diversified farming systems including 2 new oilseed crops, carinata and camelina, able to provide multiple low iLUC feedstocks for the bio-based economy. We firmly believe that a participatory approach is necessary for successfully scaling-up innovative farming systems. Engaging farmers and other stakeholders in jointly developing solutions under specific environmental, technical, and social conditions has been highly considered in CARINA. We estimate about 3M farmers being potentially reached by CARINA thanks to the direct cooperation with its partners. To find a broad consensus by primary producers, a new crop should enable to promote and harness biodiversity, be easy-to-grow, and technically feasible within current cropping systems. Carinata and camelina fully meet these requirements, able to successfully grow almost everywhere in Europe and in northern Africa. Carinata and camelina provide high quality oils that will be transformed into innovative bio-based products (bioherbicides, bioplastics). The co-product from oil extraction is a protein-rich cake, which will be valorized as animal feed, and in a multitude of high added-value products, exploiting the mucilage and glucosinolates contained within. CARINA capitalizes on a highly experienced team of 20 partners, +6 affiliated entities, from 13 EU and Associated Countries (Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Greece, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Poland, UK, Serbia, Tunisia, Morocco, Switzerland).

Sustainable management of crop production for food and non-food commodities in a changing climate will require the diversification of the crop species cultivated. To improve land use efficiency, resource-efficient species are needed that can grow on marginal land or which can be integrated into diverse agronomic strategies for value chain improvement. This can increase both productivity and income for farmers, while having a beneficial environmental impact. These concerns underlie the European SFS-01-2020 call ‘from agrobiodiversity to dynamic value chains’ and the OPTIMA project will target these challenges. Camelina is an ancient European oleaginous crop that was cultivated widely before the Second World War, but is at present rarely farmed. Nevertheless, it has a high potential for use in dynamic value chains, as it is a hardy plant with low input requirements and natural variation in its growth cycle allow it to be exploited in different cropping systems, for example short cycle varieties for summer double cropping in central Europe to varieties requiring vernalisation for winter planting in marginal land with a high desertification risk in southern Europe. Since no intensive breeding has been carried out on camelina, there is an enormous potential for improvement. Building on camelina's existing positive features, OPTIMA will apply advanced genetic approaches to generate novel genetic resources for the rapid improvement of key camelina traits. The resources generated will be screened using two complementary approaches, specific phenotypic screens and a priori selection of genotypes. In order to enhance the crop's application in a broad range of agro-ecological approaches a palette of camelina traits will be defined that will contribute to the dynamic value chain by consultation with different stakeholders in the production and exploitation chain. These traits will affect different aspects of the value chain, from nutritional factors and valuable co-products, to characteristics that can facilitate eco-friendly crop management. These will be targeted in the selection of optimal genotypes for these traits using both forward and reverse genetic screens. The latter will be benefit from the translation of knowledge obtained in the model plant Arabidopsis, a close relative of camelina. Selected camelina genotypes will then be tested in field trials under a range of pedoclimatic conditions and innovative crop management strategies aimed at reducing inputs to assess their performance and potential contribution to the dynamic value chain. Post-harvest optimisation of the value chain will be broached through pilot studies for original procedures that maximise product transformation. To consolidate the establishment of the camelina value chain new marketing strategies to promote oil, protein and other molecules derived from its genetically diversified agricultural production would be developed. These would promote crop diversification and its agroecological benefits at different levels in the value chain including end-users and consumers. Construction of a credible consortium having the complementary expertise required to fulfil the objectives of the OPTIMA project is in progress. The MRSEI programme would provide essential funding for potential additional partners to be visited and recruited as well as for consortium meetings to consolidate the project. Results obtained in the OPTIMA project are expected to provide novel resources, technology and knowledge for a stable, resilient and adaptable camelina value chain in the context of a changing climate and European policies aimed at safeguarding the environment.

European agriculture is increasingly challenged by climatic variability and weather extremes causing drought and temperature stress to crops that are very often highly sensitive to abiotic stress conditions, resulting in low productivity and yield loss. Camelina sativa is a reemerging native European oilseed that has retained its natural stress tolerance and receives attention because of its untapped breeding potential, adaptability, yield stability and high performance in variable environments. UNTWIST will unravel the stress response mechanisms of the climate-resilient crop Camelina and reveal its successful stress adaptation strategies for implementing them in new agronomic solutions. UNTWIST brings together a unique consortium with complementary expertise in stress mechanisms, (epi)genetic regulation, physiology, metabolism, crop modelling, and crop management to drive biological discovery. Stakeholder expertise by three SMEs will allow smooth knowledge transfer into crop improvement and new management strategies. UNTWIST will use genetically diverse Camelina cultivars in open field and stress-controlled experiments together with sophisticated systems-based approaches to uncover the plant’s adaptive multi-layered stress response mechanisms. Complex data integration will provide genome scale models revealing plant strategies for managing uncertainty and a validated accurate model to predict crop performance in variable environments. Moreover, UNTWIST will deliver new tools and markers for effective translation into other crops. Finally, UNTWIST will meet the climate challenge in agriculture by providing elite-adapted Camelina germplasm and developing agronomic management practices for ready adoption by farmers into new climate resistant cropping systems.

Seafood is a major source in the human diet of Omega 3 long-chain poly unsaturated fatty acids -such as eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA)- , which plays a very important role in human health. Fish oil is a vital strategic ingredient for farmed fish and crustaceans, since it provides the required quantities of Omega 3 fatty acids, especially at the critical growth stages. The prospects for increasing the production of fish oil are very limited, since most of the fisheries for fish oil production are now tightly monitored to not exceed the established fishing quotas and Total Allowable Catches (TACs). As current supply rates cannot keep up with demand, the fish farming industry, which grows close to 6% annually, in future will have to use less fish oil. To remain competitive, limit environmental degradation and optimize the efficient use of fish oil, the development of more resource-efficient and sustainable vegetable oil for aquafeed production is needed. Camelina oil, due to its unique fatty acid composition, is a sustainable vegetable oil that shows higher potential than other vegetable oils to replace fish oil in farmed salmonids diets while contributing to maintaining DHA and EPA levels. Camelina Company España (CCE), the European leader in sustainable camelina oil production, will perform a feasibility study to evaluate the new business opportunity of introducing camelina oil as an innovative key ingredient in the new oil blend that salmon aquafeed producers are currently developing to reduce fish oil dependency and increase the technical and environmental performance of salmon fish feed.