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Tomato Multi-Stress Tolerance for Sustainable Climate-Resilient Cultivation Systems

Objective

Climate change is making tomato production across Europe increasingly vulnerable. Heatwaves, drought, salinity, and plant diseases often occur together, causing much greater damage than individual stresses alone. Current breeding approaches and crop management strategies mainly address these stresses separately, limiting the ability of farmers to maintain stable yields and fruit quality under real field conditions. TOMUST will develop a new generation of climate-resilient tomatoes by identifying the biological traits that enable plants to perform well under multiple, simultaneous stresses. The project will combine large-scale field trials across diverse European climates and production systems with advanced phenotyping, environmental monitoring, genomics, and artificial intelligence to understand why some tomato varieties are naturally more resilient than others. Traditional and underused tomato varieties will play a central role, providing valuable genetic diversity for future breeding while contributing to the conservation of agricultural biodiversity.
The knowledge generated will be integrated into PhytoXplorer, an open, transparent digital platform that links plant traits, genetic information, and environmental conditions to help researchers and breeders identify the most promising climate-resilient varieties. The project will deliver new breeding materials, validated resilience traits, and practical agroecological solutions that can be readily adopted by breeders and growers. TOMUST will also develop TOMCAST, a user-friendly decision-support tool providing location-specific recommendations to help farmers select suitable varieties and management practices under changing climate conditions.
To maximise impact, TOMUST will work closely with breeders, farmers, advisors, policymakers, and other stakeholders throughout the project, ensuring that its solutions are practical, economically viable, and widely adopted. Through cascade funding, the project's methods and tools will also be extended to other important Solanaceae crops, increasing their benefits beyond tomato.
By combining cutting-edge plant science, artificial intelligence, and practical farming solutions, TOMUST will strengthen the resilience, sustainability, and competitiveness of European agriculture while supporting the objectives of the European Green Deal, the EU Biodiversity Strategy, and the Common Agricultural Policy.

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Programme(s)

Topic(s)

Funding Scheme

HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation Actions

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Call for proposal

(opens in new window) HORIZON-CL6-2025-01-two-stage

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Coordinator

JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE-UNIVERSITAET FRANKFURT AM MAIN
Net EU contribution
€ 858 758,75
Address
THEODOR W ADORNO PLATZ 1
60323 Frankfurt Am Main
Germany
Region
Hessen Darmstadt Frankfurt am Main, Kreisfreie Stadt
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost
€ 858 758,75

Participants (30)

Partners (1)