Project description
Developing sustainable resilient crops for climate change
Agriculture is expected to encounter significant challenges because of climate change, impacting food production. Challenges include heatwaves, droughts, soil failures, and the need to reduce CO2 emissions. Consequently, demand is growing for crops that are more resilient and adaptable, leading to increased yields and improved carbon sequestration capabilities. The EIC-funded Crop4Clima project will develop revolutionary rapeseed varieties absorbing 60 % more CO2 and requiring less water when grown under harsh climate conditions, leveraging the natural photorespiration process and increasing photosynthesis. The technology applied is the novel TaCo pathway, which converts CO2 released during photorespiration into CO2 fixation. Crop4Clima aims to promote sustainable and low-impact food supply chains by bringing first-of-a-kind rapeseed varieties to market and making the technology applicable to other crops.
Objective
Current global warming, caused by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (in particular CO2), is expected to rise from 2.5°C to 4°C by the end of the century. Consequently, agriculture is faced with the urging needs of increasing CO2 sequestration, coping with adverse weather and disastrous events, (ie droughts, heat waves, fire and flooding) and feeding an ever-growing world population projected at 9.7 billion in 2050. Future crops must serve as more efficient carbon sinks to mitigate climate change, plus have higher resilience and productivity to feed the global population. Crop4Clima will develop first-of-a-kind canola and rapeseed lines able to assimilate 60% more CO2 through photorespiration, requiring 20% less amount of water, improving biomass/Ha and still maintaining high oil content values as required for canola derived products. No commercial crops of that kind exist. To reach such product, we will improve and bring to commercial use, a disruptive synthetic metabolic pathway, the TaCo pathway, which turns photorespiration into a CO2-fixing instead of a CO2-releasing process, leading to increased net carbon-uptake under agronomical standard and drought field conditions. Canola and rapeseed are major crops in EU and worldwide. Notably, our technology has commercial prospects to be introduced in other C3 crops such as soybean, cotton, rice and more, based on photosynthetic and genomic similarity. The success of the technology implementation in rapeseed will allow us to establish a start-up seed company aiming to produce and sell high oil seeds with low carbon footprint. In addition and in frame of the program we will develop an innovative business plan taking into considerations how the food value chain is evolving to cope with food supply and climate change signing a precommercial agreement with our industrial partners for the development of our engineered crops up to TRL9 and build trust on the solution proposed.
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: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- social sciences economics and business economics production economics productivity
- agricultural sciences agriculture, forestry, and fisheries agriculture
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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.3.1 - The European Innovation Council (EIC)
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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.
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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-EIC-2022-TRANSITION-01
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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.
7612002 Rehovot
Israel
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.
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.