Project description
Innovative biostimulant strategies for full orchard sustainability
Fruit and nut orchards are essential for agriculture and nutrition but face increasing threats from climate-related stresses. These challenges reduce fruit set, affect quality, and threaten farm viability. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the FRUITFUL project is developing innovative molecular priming strategies using tailored biostimulants to enhance orchard resilience to abiotic stress. By applying validated formulations across diverse fruit and nut crops, the project aims to improve soil health, fruit set, and quality while using advanced approaches that integrate soil microbiomes and tree multi-omics to uncover mechanisms of stress response and resilience. Through interdisciplinary collaboration, FRUITFUL seeks to deliver sustainable fruit production solutions, reduce yield losses, promote safer agricultural inputs, and support the EU Green Deal and Farm-to-Fork strategy.
Objective
Fruit and nut orchards are vital to European and global agriculture and nutrition but face growing threats from cold, drought, heatwaves, frosts, and UV stress. These stresses reduce fruit set, impair quality, and undermine farm viability. FRUITFUL offers novel molecular priming strategies using tailored biostimulants to strengthen orchard resilience to adverse weather and abiotic stress. Using validated formulations, the project will enhance soil health, fruit set, and fruit quality across orchards of pome fruits (apples, pears); stone fruits (cherries, peaches, plums, mango); citrus (oranges, lemons, mandarins); tree nuts (hazelnuts, walnuts) and berry (Kiwi, Cocoa). For the first time, integrating soil microbiomes with tree multi-OMICS will reveal mechanisms of soil health, stress responses, and biostimulant-driven resilience in fruit and nut trees. The consortium comprises an industry partner BIOAT (Ireland); academic institutions CPSBB (Bulgaria), UOB (Italy), FGI (Bulgaria), ICDP (Romania), and FRI (Serbia); and associate partners FCA-UNL and IBR CONICET (Argentina), CRI and BZU (Pakistan), MU (New Zealand), as well as PSU (USA). Through MSCA Staff Exchanges in FRUITFUL, agronomists will train in omics and bioinformatics, molecular scientists will gain field expertise, and industry will drive market-ready solutions. This mobility will foster sustainable capacity building, career growth, and innovation across Europe and beyond.
FRUITFUL will deliver:
• Scientific impact: mechanistic insights and proven solutions for abiotic stress resilience in orchards.
• Societal impact: sustainable fruit production with safer inputs, improved consumer health.
• Economic impact: validated protocols reducing yield losses and reinforcing Europe’s leadership in biostimulants.
By uniting innovation, interdisciplinarity, and inter-sectoral mobility, FRUITFUL supports the EU Green Deal and Farm-to-Fork strategy, setting a benchmark for climate-smart perennial farming.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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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.
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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.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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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-TMA-MSCA-SE - HORIZON TMA MSCA Staff Exchanges
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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-MSCA-2025-SE-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.
Plovdiv
Bulgaria
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.