Horizon Europe: AnaEE coordinates a proposal for an INFRA call on the agroecological transitions

AnaEE, together with 11 other Research Infrastructures, recently submitted a proposal in response to the call HORIZON-INFRA-2021-01-02 on “Research infrastructures services for a sustainable and resilient agriculture and agro-ecological transitions”.

 

The objective is to provide access to innovative, customized and integrated research services to the European research communities to advance knowledge on agroecosystems, increase our understanding on the risks and threats due to global changes and foster the development of new agroecological practices, taking into account the socio-economics benefits for society, and the sustainability of rural communities.

If selected, the project named “AgroServ” will be granted 15 million € for the planned activities. Over a period of 5 years, it will develop and offer access to the European research communities of a wide range of services enabling them to conduct studies from molecular level to the ecosystem and the value chain level. The consortium gathers 73 partners under 11 Research Infrastructures working in different disciplines: plant & animal phenotyping, bioengineering, experimental ecology, microbiology, bioimaging, metrology, data and modelling, socio-economics. The diversity of the consortium will enable the researchers to conduct interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary studies to better address the underlying challenges of transitioning to sustainable and resilient agriculture and agroecology practices. AgroServ’ activities will aim to develop and strengthen the science-policy-society interface by developing tools for customization and integration of several RI services, developing a wide program of community building and training of access managers on transdisciplinarity and agroecology, boosting co-creation and innovation through Living Labs, and by providing results’ synthesis to relevant policy makers to support evidence-based policy making. 

The project will also establish strong links with other EU initiatives, notably the European Partnerships (Research Infrastructures & Living Labs, agriculture of data) and will develop strong collaborations with the two CSAs AE4EU and ALL-READY. Being well integrated in the EU landscape, AgroServ will contribute to the advancement of knowledge, foster excellent science, strengthen the European Research Area, and support critical societal challenges (food security, healthy agroecosystems, preservation of biodiversity…).