European Union (EU) water resources are increasingly coming under pressure from climate change and inefficient management, with the agri-food sector exerting a 40-60% of water use. Despite recognising the need for resource optimisation, integrating sustainable innovative solutions into farming practices remain vague. AQUAGRI-KNOW, led by a multi-actor consortium of 12 partners from 5 EU countries, aims to tackle efficient water management on-farm by broadening EIP-AGRI OGs outcomes. AQUAGRI-KNOW’s endeavour has been thoughtfully chosen to address water scarcity and water quality concerns focusing on four strategies ensuring a circular water value chain (S1. Water Use, S2. Water Smart Crops, S3. Water-Soil Interface, and S4. Water Reuse). AQUAGRI-KNOW systematically adapts, enhances and builds-up practical knowledge through a five-step methodology: (1) Knowledge collection & homogenisation to gather EIP-AGRI OGs outcomes and beyond; (2) Contextualisation & alignment to integrate the needs, barriers, challenges, and opportunities of end-users; (3) Translation & adaptation to create a clearinghouse of tailored knowledge for farmers and practitioners; (4) Sharing & exchange to facilitate knowledge flow; and (5) Interconnection & widening to boost impact across borders and increase the lifespan of generated knowledge. AQUAGRI-KNOW impact is transformative, by modernising the agri-food sectorthrough the improvement of practitioners' access to easy-to-understand and practice-oriented knowledge. AQUAGRI-KNOW empowers farmers to make informed decisions, foster cross-border collaboration, and develop a comprehensive and scalable framework applicable to similarly impacted regions globally. Furthermore, an Ambassador Program will be placed, transferring knowledge to enable the adoption of innovative solutions in new sites, expanding AQUAGRI-KNOW’s impact. Through these efforts, AQUAGRI-KNOW envisions a collaborative, informed, sustainable future for EU agriculture.

MED-GOLD will demonstrate the proof-of-concept for climate services in the agriculture sector by developing case studies for three hallmarks of the Mediterranean food system: grapes, olives and durum wheat. Agriculture is primarily climate-driven and hence highly vulnerable to climate variability and change. Evidence suggests that the Mediterranean region is under immediate threat of shifting climate patterns and the associated ecological, economic and social effects. Developing a capacity to turn the increasingly big climate-related data into tailored climate services that can inform decision-making in agriculture, is therefore a priority both in Europe and worldwide. The long-term goal of this project is to make European agriculture and food systems more competitive, resilient, and efficient in the face of climate change, by using climate services to minimize climate-driven risks/costs and seize opportunities for added-value. The MED-GOLD project aims to develop climate services for olive, grape, and durum wheat crop systems that are the basis for producing olive oil, wine and pasta. This set of crops and related food products is of utmost climatic, ecological, economic, and cultural relevance to the Mediterranean region. Because olive oil, wine and pasta are not only hallmarks of the Mediterranean diet but also food commodities with a global market, there is considerable potential for developing climate services with high added-value for olive, grape, and durum wheat. A key challenge is to co-design prototype pilot service applications involving both suppliers and users in the three major traditional Mediterranean crop systems so as to demonstrate the added-value of data/information-driven responses to changes in the climate system. The operational decision-making of users will be reviewed to either identify key decisions or introduce new actions that can benefit from climate-related information at different timescales from months to decades.

MyToolBox mobilises a multi-actor partnership (academia, farmers, technology SMEs, food industry and policy stakeholders) to develop novel interventions aimed at achieving a 20-90% reduction in crop losses due to fungal and mycotoxin contamination. MyToolBox will not only pursue a field-to-fork approach but will also consider safe use options of contaminated batches, such as the efficient production of biofuels. A major component of MyToolBox, which also distinguishes this proposal from previous efforts in the area mycotoxin reduction, is to provide the recommended measures to the end users along the food and feed chain in a web-based Toolbox. Cutting edge research will result in new interventions, which will be integrated together with existing measures in the Toolbox that will guide the end user as to the most effective measure(s) to be taken to reduce crop losses. We will focus on small grain cereals, maize, peanuts and dried figs, applicable to agricultural conditions in EU and China. Crop losses using existing practices will be compared with crop losses after novel pre-harvest interventions including investigation of genetic resistance to fungal infection, cultural control, the use of novel biopesticides (organic-farming compliant), competitive biocontrol treatment and development of forecasting models to predict mycotoxin contamination. Research into post-harvest measures including real-time monitoring during storage, innovative sorting of crops using vision-technology and novel milling technology will enable cereals with higher mycotoxin levels to be processed without breaching regulatory limits in finished products. Research into the effects of baking on mycotoxin levels will provide better understanding of process factors used in mycotoxin risk assessment. Involvement of leading institutions from China are aimed at establishing a sustainable cooperation in mycotoxin research between the EU and China.

According to the World Economic Forum and the European Union’s Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse are major threats facing humanity in the next decade. Massive consumption of chemical pesticides in agriculture is a significant contributing factor. Viticulture ranks high among the crops that depend on a massive consumption of chemical pesticides, consuming approximately sixty percent of the fungicides applied in the EU, making it a priority target for reducing the use of chemical plant protection products. At the same time, grapevine is economically and culturally important in the EU, with wine and wine-based products being among the top 3 EU agri-food sectors. Recent advances and new perspectives in grapevine breeding have opened the possibility for GrapeBreed4IPM to address the reduction of fungicides and preserve biodiversity. Lessons learned from past experience in viticulture have shown that success in improving sustainability relies on global involvement of all actors. Therefore, we brought together the top European research groups in grapevine breeding and involved different stakeholders along the grapevine industry value chain in a multi-actor and co-design approach to produce the best insights for maximum impact. The project will develop grapevine varieties with resistance to relevant diseases, adapted to local environmental and pedoclimatic conditions, and with the goal of reducing reliance on chemical pesticides. In addition, the project will provide farmers, winegrowers and advisers with best practices and guidelines for integrated pest management, adapted to disease-resistant varieties, as ingredients for their largest possible adoption and leading to a long-awaited more environmentally friendly and sustainable viticulture in Europe. The project’s outcomes will support evolution of the grapevine market to meet regulatory requirements and consumer expectations, a market that is expected to reach nearly EUR 204 billion by 2025.