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Minor ROot and Tuber crops fostering AgrobiodiversiTy and Ecosystem Services

Objective

ROTATES aims to sustainably enhance agrobiodiversity and ecosystem services by introducing and promoting minor starchy root and tuber crops (MRT) sweet potato, yams, cassava and taro, considered minor crops and currently underutilized in Europe, in both conventional and organic farming systems. These crops have substantial growth potential in temperate regions to meet the increasing demand in Europe, which has tripled over the last decade. The inclusion of MRT crops will complement the cohort of minor crops introduced into European agrosystems by the previously funded projects. Employing a multidisciplinary and multi-actor approach, ROTATES will (i) identify levers for MRT crop adoption along the value chain, through a comprehensive diagnosis of constraints and opportunities for MRT crop adoption, agronomic practices to inform farm typology analysis, genetic material assessment, and disease pressure evaluation, (ii) deploy MRT crops by developing agroecological management practices, including crop rotation and intercropping, to leverage the benefits on provisioning and regulating ecosystem services, establishing breeding hubs to deliver varieties adapted to the agroecological systems, and creating a clean seed system relying on a policy framework for phytosanitary certification to support sustainable production and material exchange, (iii) unlock the value of MRT crops by establishing sustainable and innovative healthy and traditional food and feed transformation processes, integrating livestock to recycle unused plant by-products and provide crop amendments - gluten-low-to-free pasta, bread, and plant-based ice cream and feed for ruminants and monogastrics- (iv) promote adoption along the value chain, targeting primarily farmers and growers, through marketing avenues and capacity-building efforts. ROTATES will contribute to improving producers’ income, enhancing product value, increasing agrobiodiversity, and reducing Europe's import dependence.

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.

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Coordinator

CENTRE DE COOPERATION INTERNATIONALE EN RECHERCHE AGRONOMIQUE POUR LEDEVELOPPEMENT - C.I.R.A.D. EPIC
Net EU contribution
€ 999 096,50
Address
RUE SCHEFFER 42
75016 Paris
France

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Region
Ile-de-France Ile-de-France Paris
Activity type
Research Organisations
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Total cost
€ 1 144 587,50

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