Brussels, Belgium
May 3, 2007
Source:
EPSO News 1
Europe has a long
tradition of innovation in food production, leading
to significant breakthroughs in yield increase and
quality improvement in European crops. The expected
growth of the human population and the increase of
the average level of welfare in the coming decades
will impose an increasing demand for food, feed and
energy. At the same time, there is a growing
awareness of the potential impacts on the
environment and the need to develop sustainable
production systems for water, fertiliser, herbicide
and pesticide use.
Collaborative research efforts and joint investments
in large-scale technologies will create the critical
mass that Europe needs in order to sustain its
competitiveness in this area. This will facilitate a
stepping up from national to multilateral
coordination, thereby reducing redundancy and
maximising the returns on investments in plant
sciences.
To address these ambitions, the
ERA-NET Plant Genomics (ERA-PG) was launched in
2004 with coordination funding of €2.2 million for 4
years from the EU’s Sixth Framework Programme. It
was one of the first networks to receive funding
under the ERA-NET scheme which seeks to strengthen
the European Research Area (ERA).
ERA-PG is coordinated by NGI/NWO from the
Netherlands, drawing its original partners from
Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany,
Italy, Norway, Spain, and the UK. Since then, the
network has been enlarged to encompass Bulgaria,
Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and Israel.
ERA-PG started with a large information gathering
exercise which mapped out the landscape of research
activities and the economic impact of plant
genomics. Researchers and science policy-makers were
brought together to build common ground for joint
strategic and to perform a study leading to the
development of common framework mechanisms and best
practices. In February 2006, ERA-PG launched its
first joint call for research with a budget of over
€30 million, receiving more than 100 pre-proposals.
This was one of the largest ERA-NET coordinated
research programmes.
