Request for Proposals: Biotech for Climate Resilient Crops and Plant-Based Biomanufacturing

Specific Objectives

• Innovative ideas put forward under this Challenge must go beyond incremental changes to the state-of-the-art and result in novel production processes that must deliver energy- and resource-efficient, low emission foods that maintain or increase biodiversity and are integral to a healthy diet.
• Funded projects are expected to develop breakthrough technologies that reach TRL4 (validation in laboratory environment) with viable plants at the end of the projects. The proposals should work on both the following objectives:
  • Increasing plant growth, yields and resistance to stress through:
    • Enhancing tolerance to stress combinations occurring due to different climate scenarios that include the simultaneous exposure of crops to different stresses e.g. heat combined with drought, salinity, flooding, high CO2 levels, as well as indirect effect of climate change via altered composition and behaviour of weeds, insects, pathogens and soil microbiome and possible impact of human-generated pollutants.
    • Increasing water use efficiency and nutrient use efficiency compared to current crops in commercial use.
    • Improving plant reproduction and seed filling processes under unfavourable conditions caused by combination of at least two stress factors.
    • Investigating and enhancing plant and soil microbiome interactions.
  • Substantially increasing the nutritional value (e.g. proteins, vitamins) in crops through plant native and non-native ingredients in crops.
• Projects must also develop a complete methodology for assessing the increase of plant growth, yields, and climate resilience to single and multiple stresses, and/or assess changes to the nutritional value of crops, as appropriate. Proposals should include multi-omics approaches including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics and phenomics. These approaches can be further underpinned by leveraging technologies such as, but not limited to nanoparticle technology, chemistry, and advanced artificial intelligence to develop and introduce novel defence and acclimation strategies, currently not present in crops to achieve greater tolerance to harsh environmental conditions and/or biomanufacturing of non-native ingredients, to enable the time required for that development to be significantly shortened. Proposals should also look to address the narrow genetic diversity of novel crops and are also expected to consider regulatory aspects and to build on the work carried out so far by the European Food and Safety Authority (EFSA), where appropriate.

Scope

• Land based agricultural production is the source of approximately 95% of human food nutrients (UN FAO). Intensive and often inappropriate practices in agriculture have however resulted in severe soil degradation, thereby reducing the capacity of soils to support food production and other important ecosystem services such as the regulation of water, nutrients, and carbon cycles. Soil degradation is further accelerated by the effects of climate change, with abiotic stresses such as heat, drought, salinity, and waterlogging, often in combination, having negative effects on the world’s crop production. The direct impact of a changed climate is also frequently accompanied by indirect impacts due to alterations in the composition and behaviour of weeds, insects, pathogens, and soil microbiome, alongside the impacts of increased amounts of human-generated pollutants.
• Plants react to such stresses with what are often conflicting physiological and metabolic responses. These may prioritise one acclimatisation/adaptation strategy over the other, a blend of one or more responses, and/or through developing a completely new strategy, all of which can, in turn, impact final production including nutrient content.
• When combined with an increasing human population, likely to increase net demand for food, there is a clear rationale to reinforce existing food and nutrient production systems and explore complementary routes to food production that are more efficient, resilient, sustainable and maintain or increase biodiversity.
• This Pathfinder Challenge therefore aims to support projects that enhance adaptation pathways for the production of climate-resilient crops and develop alternative pathways to produce high value ingredients in plants by increasing nutrient profile of crops based on plant native and/or non-native ingredients.

Funding Information

• Budget (EUR) – Year 2025: 120 000 000
• Contributions: 500000 to 4000000

Eligibility Criteria

• Entities eligible to participate
  • Any legal entity regardless of its place of establishment, including legal entities from non-associated third countries or international organisation (including international European research organisations) is eligible to participate (whether it is eligible for funding or not), provided that the conditions laid down in the Horizon Europe Regulation have been met together with any other conditions laid down in the specific call or topic.
  • According to Article 2(16) of the HE Regulation, ‘Legal entity’ means any natural or legal person created and recognised as such under national law, EU law or international law, which has legal personality and which may, acting in its own name, exercise rights and be subject to obligations, or an entity without legal personality as referred to in point (c) of Article 200(2) of the Financial Regulation.
• To become a beneficiary, legal entities must be eligible for funding.
• To be eligible for funding, applicants must be established in one of the following countries:
  • Member States of the European Union, including their outermost regions:
    • Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden.
  • the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) linked to the Member States:
    • Aruba (NL), Bonaire (NL), Curação (NL), French Polynesia (FR), French Southern and Antarctic Territories (FR), Greenland (DK), New Caledonia (FR), Saba (NL), Saint Barthélemy (FR), Sint Eustatius (NL), Sint Maarten (NL), St. Pierre and Miquelon (FR), Wallis and Futuna Islands (FR).
  • countries associated to Horizon Europe – Pillar III:
    • Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Faroe Islands, Georgia, Iceland, Israel, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Tunisia, Türkiye, Ukraine, United Kingdom.

For more information, visit EC.