Within the novIGRain project the aim is to start from a scientific resistance assessment and develop a new type of Plant Protection Product (PPP) for larvicide treatment in combination with a versatile application technology. It has to be researched whether or not this larvicide active substance – that is assumed to be applied in ultra-low volumes (ULV) – is in line with the overall legal framework so that it can be used as grain storage Grain Production Product. The benefits of this new product are multiple, but most important are: (i) it will broaden the available active substance spectra in the field of PPPs, which is important for the prevention of the development of increased insecticide resistance in the EU, (ii) as it is a larvicide, it has a unique mode of action and allows precise targeting of insect development stages, (iii) it has improved health safety characteristics, which is important for the product users and grain consumers, (iv) as it has less hazardous residues (v) the product is highly effective, (vi) it would represent economic benefits for the EU, as there are lower export restrictions given the product’s characteristics. The new application technology will aim to allow the combination of multiple PPP’s (larvicides simultaneously with adulticides) which is expected to not only have a positive impact on the risk of resistance development, but will also lower the amount of adulticides required for proper management, which results in less human and environmental exposure and cost savings. The combination of the larvicide and adulticides will be tested (field trials), which will provide the up-to-date information on the area of use for integration in IPM systems. Once the tools, product and technology have been developed, a detailed impact assessment will be performed, in combination with several stakeholders’ interaction and demonstration activities, which assure the broad dissemination of the project results.

AGENT aims to transform genebanks (GB) from living archives into bio-digital resources centres, equipped to meet the needs of a changing world. Fifteen GB and four genebank genomic centers will create a network to work exemplarily on barley and wheat for (i) establishing a European (global) crop genomic diversity atlas, (ii) activating currently inaccessible legacy phenotypic data, (iii) implementing a novel concept of concerted accumulation of phenologic and agronomic data for individual GenRes collections to establish training population datasets for the genome-wide prediction of untested GenRes accessions. Phenotyping will take into account diverse environmental conditions (climate, soil, geography, pathogens) provided by the diversity of eco-geographic locations of the participating GB and their partners. These activities will be supported by a bioinformatics network that will implement FAIR data principles, standards, protocols, and data formats enabling data storage, access, use, and re-use, extending the existing EURISCO GenRes portal for new data types. AGENT will use existing solutions established by ongoing European projects and international initiatives, but also develop new tools for novel functionality of data access, visualisation, and use, which will be connected and implemented via plugin or web-services, allowing their incorporation in EURISCO and other data portals, and their easy application to other crop GenRes, based on data already available at EURISCO or provided by AGENT partner GB. A coordinated testing network is another unique layer of AGENT, directly involving stakeholders (e.g. farmer cooperatives, breeding companies, NGOs) in monitoring, mentoring, capacity building and training in the development of workflows and tools. Thus, AGENT project results will be directly disseminated to GB, researchers, breeders, policy makers and the general public and raise awareness of the general as well as the specific societal importance of GenRes.

Biodiversity loss in conventional farmland is one of the most pressing issues that humanity has to face. Using the approach of living labs that promote the involvement of citizens in science, this project strives to collectively develop field-to landscape management, mainly by floral enrichment, and bioindicators about the conservation state of farmland biodiversity. In this project, we will focus on cereal fields along a climatic gradient from the mild Atlantic climate (western France) to the more continental climate of central Europe (western Czech Republic). In line with the concept of ecological intensification, conservation of biodiversity aims at maximizing ecosystem services, here pest and weed controls and pollination, and to minimize disservices (presence of weeds and pests, loss of crop yields). The European climatic scale investigated will help to provide European-wide solutions for adaptation to land-use and climate changes. Along a climatic gradient, it is expected that the climatic context plays a major role on the potential of ecosystem services in each area. Therefore, to be able to effectively design plant floral enrichment that supports pest and weed control as well as pollination at the European scale, a study is needed on a large spatial and climatic gradient that would include a large range of taxa (wild flowers, slugs, aphids, parasitoids, hyperparasitoids, spiders, rove beetles, carabids, dung beetles, syrphids, butterflies, and bees) and landscape contexts. Simultaneously managing multiple ecosystem services requires understanding the mechanisms underlying ecosystem service interactions. The approach we propose to tackle this problem is multidisciplinary and based on the combination of the living lab concept, citizen-based means of field data collection called BioBlitz, and manipulated field experiments by floral enrichment that will reflect the results of the living lab, BioBlitz and scientific data. Among the outcomes of the project, living labs will be established in the four countries involved (France, Belgium, Germany and Czech Republic). To assess biodiversity, we will develop two kinds of multi-taxon-based integrated indicators. Finally, scenarios of adding diversity within, nearby and in the surroundings of the fields in order to optimize diversity in agro-ecosystems at the farm/landscape scales will be co-developed in living labs with farmers to engage them, in protecting biodiversity and ecosystem health. Our approach will contribute to the knowledge needs specified in the Themes 1 and 2 of the Call document Biodiversa+. Our project will provide tools adapted to different climatic/and local to landscape practices as the chosen countries are contrasted in their climate, landscape history and agricultural practices. The consortium includes 5 academic partners, a company and 2 stakeholders, that will ensure the dissemination of the results to the farmers.

The intensification of agriculture and herbicide use has led to the degradation of farmland ecosystems, with significant loss of farmland terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity and services. Herbicide use within fields has reduced farmland plant (weed) abundance and diversity, destroying these refuge and food resources relied upon by birds, pollinators and natural enemy arthropods. Herbicides have selected for some noxious weeds, damaging to crops, leading to an arms race with more herbicide being used to combat weeds that do relatively well in conditions of herbicide use. This is compounded by agricultural intensification at landscape scales that has led to the loss of semi-natural floral habitat surrounding fields, including areas of meadow, margins, hedgerows and woods that provided overwintering, oviposition and alternative food resources for biodiversity. This lost semi-natural habitat is also no longer able to intercept herbicides, applied in field, leading to an increase in the run-off of these and other pesticides into water courses adjacent to farmland fields where they significantly impact the ecological quality and diversity (ecological status) of freshwaters, within farmland and downstream. In the FRESHH project, we hypothesise that we can reduce herbicide usage by adopting the ecosystem service of weed seed regulation by carabid beetles. Restoration of semi-natural habitat in and around fields, via beetle banks, margins or hedgerows, would increase carabid abundance and diversity by conservation, through the provision of food and refuge resources. These restored habitats could also intercept some of the herbicides that are still applied, preventing run-off into freshwaters. Semi-natural habitat restoration in farmland would therefore have multiple, synergistic effects, playing a role not only in the conservation of carabids and of terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity, but also in the release (rewilding) of weed communities to more natural abundance and diversity within farmland with lower herbicide selection pressure. This FRESHH approach is dependent on the acceptability to farmers of the adoption of carabids, in place of herbicides, and of the installation of semi-natural habitat. FRESHH explicitly uses a transdisciplinary approach, at the interface of socio-economics, ecology and agronomy, to balance our concerns for farmland terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems and farmer needs for weed control. Co-development with farmers will produce acceptable management to restore semi-natural habitat, to foster carabid beetle regulation of the weed seedbank and to reduce impacts on freshwaters through direct herbicide input reduction and greater interception of herbicide runoff.