Project description
Drought-resilient cereal strategies
Prolonged drought resulting from climate change has a severe impact on agriculture, necessitating the implementation of measures to ensure stable yields. The EU-funded BOOSTER project set its sights on devising sustainable strategies for resilient cereals. It will employ two complementary approaches, tested on two cereal varieties that respond differently to drought: European maize and Ethiopian teff. The project’s objectives include enhancing drought resilience in cereal crops through the identification of genomic variants influencing drought tolerance, as well as the development of environmentally friendly seaweed extracts and microbial biostimulants. Ultimately, the project strives to increase biomass production from maize and teff, even in challenging drought conditions, thereby reducing the need for irrigation.
Objective
Prolonged drought due to climate change has a severe impact on agriculture, requiring measures to secure yield stability under water-shortage conditions. This project aims to be a BOOSTER for developing innovative and sustainable strategies to create climate resilient and drought tolerant cereals. Two synergistic strategies will be implemented to achieve this goal. Firstly, a new approach will identify genomic variants in regulatory regions functionally associated with drought tolerance. Novel regulatory elements underlying resilience will inform efficient breeding efforts to create new drought tolerant cereal varieties. Secondly, novel seaweed extracts and microbial biostimulants will be developed as an eco-friendly approach for improving drought resilience. The two strategies will be tested in two cereals with different responsiveness to drought: European maize and Ethiopian teff, a cereal with high genetic similarity to the desiccation tolerant Eragrostis nindensis. BOOSTER will improve drought tolerance in both maize and teff, while simultaneously exploring the potential for transferring species-specific drought responsive features. By exploiting natural genetic variation to achieve drought tolerant genotypes and by developing biostimulants derived from living organisms, BOOSTER will take advantage of the already available natural resources to steer our agriculture towards novel drought tolerant varieties. Importantly, BOOSTER approaches and results are transferable to other crops. A tailored communication/dissemination strategy and a stakeholders’ engagement plan will ensure the expected outcomes and impacts. The project will produce increased maize- and teff-derived biomass resources under harsh drought conditions, will lower irrigation requirement, will strengthen competitiveness of European and African agri-food industry, and will provide concrete examples for improving public awareness about a sustainable use of bio-based technologies.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- engineering and technology civil engineering water engineering irrigation
- agricultural sciences agriculture, forestry, and fisheries agriculture grains and oilseeds cereals
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.2.6 - Food, Bioeconomy Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment
MAIN PROGRAMME
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HORIZON.2.6.6 - Bio-based Innovation Systems in the EU Bioeconomy
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation Actions
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) HORIZON-CL6-2022-CIRCBIO-02-two-stage
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
00184 ROMA
Italy
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.