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Source: European Plant Science Organization (EPSO) News N° 10
http://www.epsoweb.org/commun/EpsoNews/Issue10_extract.pdf

Research Infrastructure for Plant Sciences in a European Research Area
By Raoul Bino and Ulrich Schurr, EPSO Board members

New technologies have often opened new routes to breakthrough knowledge – and often such technologies require specific research infrastructures. Therefore the specific support of a Research Infrastructure (RI) has been identified in the Lisbon process from the very beginning as a crucial element for the establishment of the European Research Area (ERA). The recent public consultation that was the basis of the Green Paper ‘The European Research Area: New Perspectives’ has reiterated the importance of an innovative RI for European science.

Plant sciences have a long tradition of advancements through technology including highlights like the development of optical, electron and confocal microscopy for cell biology or the utilisation of modern bioinformatic databases and seed banks. Nevertheless the participation of European plant sciences in infrastructure programmes has been sparse – despite the fact that a wide range of instruments is available at the European level to support the setup of and access to research facilities (see article on page 8).

Obviously many facilities that are required in plant sciences do not have the dimension of large experimental apparatus that are common in physics; and clearly the benefit of infrastructure must be judged with respect to the appropriateness to achieve excellent scientific results. However, increasingly infrastructural bottlenecks hinder progress in plant sciences like, for example, high throughput sequencing, structural biology or plant phenotyping, for which a coordinated action at European scale could be an appropriate way forward.

Large scale infrastructures and networks

Large scale infrastructures can be set up in a single location or as a network of installations. Utilisation of synergistic effects is one of the main reasons for coordinated action in RI. Such synergies can be achieved at a number of levels.

Often significant financial investment is required to provide novel technologies. Thus joint European infrastructure activities can provide access to modern infrastructure even for researchers from small countries that could not afford a national facility. However this is not only important for small member states, but also large countries can benefit from task sharing in infrastructure, if their researchers gain access to infrastructures in other European countries. This is especially true in facilities that require significant and ongoing financial support during their time of operation – a feature typical for plant-oriented research facilities.

The expertise assembled at joint research infrastructure can provide efficient service and the most adequate approaches for researchers that require access to a specific infrastructure only for a specific step in their research. For example, structural information on ‘your favourite protein’ is easily gained by collaboration with experts in structural biology who have access to a portfolio of technologies.

Thus interaction with experts in research facilities accelerates progress and gains more focus on specific research of expert scientists. Infrastructure facilities often allow quantum leaps in the development of technologies. This is fostered by the availability of the infrastructures itself, but also through the concentration of expertise and the challenges provided by external and internal users of the facility.

EPSO’s role

EPSO wants to help its members and plant scientists in Europe in general to obtain the most innovative and effective research environment. With respect to infrastructure we therefore support networking of plant scientists through the EPSO workshops and conferences and possibly in future through dedicated information in the EPSO database that could contain information on infrastructure of EPSO members, if EPSO members ask for more support in that area. Currently EPSO fosters this discussion through workshops like the plant phenotyping workshop planned for autumn 2009 as well as through support in science policy at the European and national level. EPSO helps to identify needs and to build networks and installations of research infrastructures that benefit from a European dimension.
 

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