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).

The PhageFire project is devised to satisfy the unmet need for a secure and reliable solution to control fire blight (FB) disease in pome fruits caused by the bacterium Erwinia amylovora (Ea). The Spanish pome fruit producer, Peras de Rincón de Soto has partnered with Enviroinvest (Hungary) consultancy company expert in production, authorization and commercialization of phage-based pesticides, ZHAW (Switzerland) – a top research centre in phage therapy and Kimitec Group specialist in the design, development and commercialization of natural solutions for the plant protection sector. Together, PhageFire Consortium members aim to further develop an integrated phage-based solution enabling pome fruit farmers to effectively control Ea infections, reducing both production and economic losses. In addition, this will also result on reduced reliance on harmful chemicals (mainly copper-based products) and antibiotics. Based on our advanced current development of phages cocktails and their successful results on the safety and benefits of phages, our goal is to develop and commercialise PhageFire as the first-in-class phage-based biopesticide in Europe providing effective prevention and treatment against Ea infections. In order to take the project forward and reach product commercialization, a next estimated investment of €3.9 M is needed. The successful consecution of the FTI funding will help to cover the 70% (€2.97 M) while the Consortium partners will assume the 30% (€0.93 M) with own funds and the potential economic help from private investors. Considering the increasing demand for FB protection methods, PhageFire biopesticide will represent a great business opportunity (€22.12 M net profit between 2023-2027, ROI 4.66) by filling a highly profitable niche in the growing biopesticide market (CAGR 14.93%, €9.31 B by 2025). Furthermore, the scalable potential of phages will also enable targeting new horizons in plant disease protection.