Agricultural productivity needs to rise by 70% by 2050 to provide sufficient food for the growing population on a limited amount of land and water, while climate change and the onset of insect resistance makes pest control increasingly difficult. The current (overused) tools, chemical insecticides and GMO-crops, are not sustainable and most of the alternative biological solutions are not feasible for the large scale agriculture in row crops due to the high cost, complicated application methods, and inconsistent performance. Mating Disruption (MD) is an effective, affordable, and sustainable pest control method, which uses insect sex pheromones to prevent pest reproduction by disrupting their ability to attract mating partners. Mating Disruption is a scalable new solution for row crops, with 20-years of successful application in specialty crops. MD is a sustainable, non-toxic pest control method, which does not affect biodiversity, soil, or groundwater. The key objectives of PHERA are to demonstrate cost-efficient production of three bio-based pheromones at full industrial scale and to demonstrate pheromone effectiveness for pest control and for sustainable increase of agricultural productivity in the field. The cost of pheromones has been a key barrier to the wide adoption of MD in row crops. Biological production of radically cheaper pheromones is a disruptive technology that will allow the application of pheromones for pest control in row crops. PHERA will create a new value chain across biotech and ag-tech, and the consortium brings together all required expertise in biotech production and pheromone formulation and application. PHERA will create a new ag-tech business for MD solutions in row crop applications worth €640 million and 300 new jobs by 2027, and a long-term potential in excess of €2 billion. The new products developed in PHERA will have a substantial positive impact on the sustainability profile of large-scale row crop production.

The overall objective of BioCatPolymers is to demonstrate a sustainable and efficient technological route to convert low quality residual biomass to high added-value biopolymers. The technology is based on an integrated hybrid bio-thermochemical process combining the best features of both. The biological step consists of the efficient conversion of biomass-derived sugars to mevalonolactone (MVL). MVL can be then converted to bio-monomers via highly selective chemocatalytic processes. BioCatPolymers is specifically aiming at the efficient and economic production of isoprene and 3-methyl 1,5-pentanediol (3MPD), two momoners with very large markets that can be further processed in the existing infrastructure for fossil-based polymers for the production of elastomers and polyurethanes, respectively. This ambitious target will be attained by optimizing and demonstrating the entire value chain on 0.5 ton of biomass/day scale, starting from the pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass to hydrolysis and biological fermentation to MVL, separation of MVL from fermentation broth, selective catalytic conversion to the targeted monomer and finally purification to polymer grade quality. The novel approach we propose in this project surpasses the impediments of traditional solely bio-based approaches. It aims at producing bio-isoprene at 50% cost reduction and 3MPD at 70% cost reduction compared to average market prices, by optimizing the platform cell factories and all downstream processes and integrating the process modules, thereby increasing the competitiveness of biological processes in terms of economics. The BioCatPolymers consortium consists of highly qualified and experienced researchers with complementary expertise. Trans-disciplinary considerations are strongly involved in the project. The strong industrial leadership-driven innovation potential is reflected through the fact that the large majority of the partners are from industry.

For decades, Europe has been facing a huge protein deficit (more than 70% is imported). Today, the objective is to initiate ways to sustainably produce proteins in Europe, by creating new cross-sectorial businesses. Partners within the consortium have been developing a bio-refinery concept allowing transformation of woody biomass into high-value Single Cell Protein (SCP) to be used as animal feed. The SYLFEED project consists in upscaling the bio-refinery process to ensure successful demonstration of Arbiom Wood to Food technology consisting in converting lignocellulose into SCP for use in aquaculture. SYLFEED will demonstrate the synergies between forestry industry and protein fish feed market, creating new high value opportunities for the former and an alternative, sustainable, protein source for the latter. Wood residues are abundant and highly sustainable and SCP present an amino-acid profile close to that of the fishes, making them an excellent raw material in fish feed formulation (there is room for more than 50 lignocellulose bio-refineries in Europe, leading to the production of at least 1.4 Mt of proteins and a significant reduction of the protein gap). SYLFEED spans across the full value chain: from biomass stakeholder to fish feed sellers (future buyers of SYLFEED proteins), including biomass-to-SCP technology developer/ experts. SYLFEED’s ambition is threefold: - To respond to strategic needs of protein production in Europe to increase self-sufficiency. - To improve the local economy (forest industry), save jobs in important industrial sectors and create new ones in the bio-economy. - To produce proteins for fish feed in a way that addresses local and global environmental issues (oceans overexploitation and negative effects of plant’s culture – soybean, corn...). To do so, the grand challenge of the SYLFEED demonstration project is to upscale from pilot scale and validate the bio-refinery process that converts lignocellulose into SCP suitable to formulate fish feed.

The project goal is to further advance the emerging area of Bio - process - systems engineering (BPSE) by capitalizing the recent advances and ITN of RENESENG (FP7 - PEOPLE - ITN) toward the following project objectives : - Expanding the knowledge for value chains across feedstocks, products and industries, e.g., by looking into the potential of MSW (including food waste) energy chemicals nexus. - Investigating the area of knowledge management (i.e., data structures, workflows, protocols) for the effective communication across the diverse academic research scales and industrial applications (i.e., lab to unit operations, to process and plant design, to business development, sustainability assessment). - Applying the existing RENESENG tools, models, methods, know how as well as the newly developed in this project to emerging topics of bioeconomy and links to circular economy, with special focus on various forms of “waste” biomass (e.g., MSW, glycerol, lignin). Enhancing the network with new aca demic and non academic partners and significantly contributing via meaningful secondments to the career development of ESR and ER.