The DEFEND consortium will target two viral diseases of livestock which are emerging into Europe – African swine fever (ASF) and lumpy skin disease (LSD). African swine fever virus (ASFV) is the causative agent of ASF, a highly contagious disease of domestic pigs which causes a haemorrhagic syndrome with up to 100% mortality. ASF is endemic in sub-Saharan Africa and on the Italian island of Sardinia. In 2007 the disease was reported in Georgia. Since then it has spread to Russia, Ukraine, Poland and neighbouring countries. In 2017 outbreaks were reported in the Czech Republic and Romania. Wild boar are susceptible to ASFV and facilitate the continuing spread of the disease in Europe with regular spill-over into in-contact domestic pigs. The capripoxvirus Lumpy Skin Disease virus (LSDV) causes a classic systemic poxvirus disease in cattle and spreads rapidly in warm humid conditions, most likely due to insect-borne transmission. LSDV entered Europe, the Balkans and Caucasus for the first time in 2015. The ongoing epidemic has caused the deaths of thousands of cattle through mortality and eradication campaigns. ASFV and LSDV represent an immediate and serious threat to the pig and cattle industries in Europe and eastern and central Asia. The aim of the consortium is to control the growing LSD and ASF epidemics in Europe and neighbouring countries by understanding the drivers of LSDV and ASFV emergence, and generating research outputs which underpin novel diagnostic tools and vaccines and authenticate appropriate and rapid responses by decision-makers. A multi-actor approach will be incorporated as a central tenant of the project, with collaborations between experts from academia, industry, and government bodies including EU and non-EU partners from countries affected or threatened by ASF and LSD.

Water-scarce regions in Sub-Saharan Africa are most vulnerable to climate change and fluctuations in seasonal rainfall patterns. Agriculture is the most important economic sector in those areas and adaptation strategies must include technical support to subsistence and smallholder farmers who need to apply innovative technologies and practices to cope with environmental stresses and create revenue generating activities. The DIVAGRI project proposes a wide range of bio-based innovative solutions adapted to specific conditions in target countries. Ecosystem restoration in combination with diverse crop production in regenerative agricultural systems, mobile biorefineries for biomass conversion to high-value compounds and bioenergy, and the highly innovative clay-based micro-irrigation system “SLECI” (Self-regulating, Low Energy, Clay-based Irrigation) are solutions developed by DIVAGRI. In addition, building on community participation and co-development of collaborative business models, the project will enable smallholder farmers to increase income and generate new economic opportunities while guaranteeing food security, real rural opportunities, and sustainability. The focus of this project is not only on the primary production sector but also on the food and bio-based industries, thus promoting new partnerships between producers, processors, retailers and consumers and opening new sustainable avenues for businesses, services and value chains in support of rural communities. Developing innovative bio-based technologies characterised by the efficient use of resources and utilisation of waste and by-products, DIVAGRI contributes to the EU research priority of making the transition towards circular agriculture and bioeconomy.

The overall objective will be to create and mobilise an International network of high calibre centres around a strong European group of institutes selected for their appropriate expertises, to collect, amplify, characterise, standardise, authenticate, distribute and track, mammalian and other exotic viruses. The network of EVAg laboratories including 25 institutions represents an extensive range of virological disciplines. The architecture of the consortium is based on the association of capacities accessible to the partners but also to any end-users through the EVAg web-based catalogue. This concept has been elaborated and tested for its efficiency during the successful EVA project (FP7). The project will integrate more facilities dedicated to high risk pathogen (HRP) manipulation (1 in EVA, 13 in EVAg) The access to products derived from those HRP will be enhanced and for instance the production of diagnostic reagents will be facilitated. The new project will also provide access to high containment biosafety facilities to carry out in vivo studies of infectious disease using natural or models hosts, to look at prophylactic or therapeutic control measures and to develop materials for the evaluation of diagnostic tests, meaning an extensive capacity to service and to training. EVAg will also link up with other network-based virus-associated programmes that exist globally. However, looking further ahead, EVAg is conceived ultimately to be an open entity aiming at developing synergies and complementarity capabilities in such a way as to offer an improved access to researchers. This project will generate the largest collection of mammalian viruses in the world and move beyond the current state-of-the-art to provide an increasingly valuable resource and service to the world’s scientific community, including government health departments, higher education institutes, industry and, through information systems, the general public.