Periodic Reporting for period 3 - FORGENIUS (Improving access to FORest GENetic resources Information and services for end-USers)
Reporting period: 2024-01-01 to 2024-12-31
Forests cover 33% of Europe’s land area and provide essential ecological and societal services; they, sequester 719 million tonnes CO2 / year and provide over 3 million jobs. These services rely on rich Forest Genetic Resources (Forest GenRes), which are mostly conserved in situ, allowing continuous adaptation. European countries and the EU have long promoted, supported and implemented conservation of these resources. The European Forest Genetic Resources Programme (EUFORGEN), founded in 1994, is the most advanced programme of its kind, worldwide. Its main achievement is a continent-wide network of in situ Forest GenRes collections (http://portal.eufgis.org/(opens in new window)) called Genetic Conservation Units (GCUs). GCUs are selected to represent forest tree populations adapted to unique sets of environmental conditions and have distinct genetic, phenotypic, and/or ecological characteristics. End-users in the fields of Forest GenRes conservation and management, breeding, and forest policy-making need improved data, standards and tools to harness the full value of these unique populations.
FORGENIUS will build high quality, harmonized and standardized indices and predictive tools for the evaluation of quality, diversity, resilience, and breeding potential associated to the 4000+ GCUs of the EUFOGEN network, that will be used by GenRes managers and conservationists to establish science-based GenRes management strategies. Its standards can be applied to domesticated relatives of forest trees (e.g. cherry tree, apple tree), as well as to Forest GenRes management in third countries.
FORGENIUS will also provide novel services to end-users for autonomously evaluating the resilience and breeding potential of extant GCUs, and will provide standardized information to policymakers about the value and conservation status of GCUs and of the whole collection.
The overall goal of FORGENIUS is to produce new high-throughput quantitative assessment of Forest GenRes and make it accessible to end-users by developing general standards, tools and services for a better characterization and management of the entire GCU collection. To do this, FORGENIUS will: i) assess genetic and phenotypic diversity, as well as resilience, of GCUs under climate change; ii) apply the novel data to underpin management decisions that promote the resilience and adaptability of GCUs; iii) characterise Forest GenRes to identify high-quality germplasm for breeding and plantations; iv) create novel services for end-users within and beyond the conservation communities.
FORGENIUS will build high quality, harmonized and standardized indices and predictive tools for the evaluation of quality, diversity, resilience, and breeding potential associated to the 4000+ GCUs of the EUFOGEN network, that will be used by GenRes managers and conservationists to establish science-based GenRes management strategies. Its standards can be applied to domesticated relatives of forest trees (e.g. cherry tree, apple tree), as well as to Forest GenRes management in third countries.
FORGENIUS will also provide novel services to end-users for autonomously evaluating the resilience and breeding potential of extant GCUs, and will provide standardized information to policymakers about the value and conservation status of GCUs and of the whole collection.
The overall goal of FORGENIUS is to produce new high-throughput quantitative assessment of Forest GenRes and make it accessible to end-users by developing general standards, tools and services for a better characterization and management of the entire GCU collection. To do this, FORGENIUS will: i) assess genetic and phenotypic diversity, as well as resilience, of GCUs under climate change; ii) apply the novel data to underpin management decisions that promote the resilience and adaptability of GCUs; iii) characterise Forest GenRes to identify high-quality germplasm for breeding and plantations; iv) create novel services for end-users within and beyond the conservation communities.
The third reporting period is the time of full maturity of the FORGENIUS project.
FORGENIUS brings together scientists from multiple research fields, who were not used to share their research before, as well as a gradient of sensitivities from pure research to pure management. Multiple cogs, represented by the first six work packages, constitute an efficient and streamlined chain of transmission of information, from science to management and back. The ultimate goal of the project, like a flower at the tip of the stem of a flowering plant, is a new information system for the description of the network of Genetic Conservation Units, coupled with a user-friendly interface allowing the user to navigate unassisted through the system.
Data collection is now complete. The consortium has collectively decided that each working party would publish the data produced by the project under the form of "data papers", that is, peer-reviewed scientific publications that allow to share curated data as soon as they become available—as opposed to publishing the data in the context of articles that analyse the data and test scientific hypotheses, which typically take much longer to prepare and publish. This is in the "Open access" spirit that informs the project's publication plans (and the EC's guidelines for open science). In all relevant Work Packages (WP1 through WP4), the preparation of data papers is ongoing, with all expected articles planned for submission within the first half of 2025. “Results” papers are continuously flowing from the project as well, from modelling of resilience to climate extremes to assessment of long-term adaptive potential. Ph. D. students contributing to FORGENIUS’ success have defended their theses, or are busy working on one. The Consortium is really behaving as a true community, which is an obvious key to success.
The development of end user-oriented products is also reaching its goals. The new EUFGIS Information System has been finalised, with the definition of all the indices that enter the description of Genetic Conservation Units. The process that led to this list of indices needs to be highlighted: scientists, data scientists, information technologists, and end-users all worked together to compile a balanced set of diversity indicators from multiple sources, taking into account the needs expressed by end-users; this outreach effort materialised in the very detailed and expansive Data Dictionary that was built during the process of the creation of the new EUFGIS.
Finally, the EUFGIS User Interface is now accessible to beta-testers for feedback and training. The new EUFGIS holds vast amounts of information, from environmental indices obtained through remote sensing, through modelled predictions of response of trees to extreme events, to eco-physiological traits to genomic data and estimators of (adaptive) diversity. It is a complex mass of data, yet presented in a simple, intuitive way.
FORGENIUS brings together scientists from multiple research fields, who were not used to share their research before, as well as a gradient of sensitivities from pure research to pure management. Multiple cogs, represented by the first six work packages, constitute an efficient and streamlined chain of transmission of information, from science to management and back. The ultimate goal of the project, like a flower at the tip of the stem of a flowering plant, is a new information system for the description of the network of Genetic Conservation Units, coupled with a user-friendly interface allowing the user to navigate unassisted through the system.
Data collection is now complete. The consortium has collectively decided that each working party would publish the data produced by the project under the form of "data papers", that is, peer-reviewed scientific publications that allow to share curated data as soon as they become available—as opposed to publishing the data in the context of articles that analyse the data and test scientific hypotheses, which typically take much longer to prepare and publish. This is in the "Open access" spirit that informs the project's publication plans (and the EC's guidelines for open science). In all relevant Work Packages (WP1 through WP4), the preparation of data papers is ongoing, with all expected articles planned for submission within the first half of 2025. “Results” papers are continuously flowing from the project as well, from modelling of resilience to climate extremes to assessment of long-term adaptive potential. Ph. D. students contributing to FORGENIUS’ success have defended their theses, or are busy working on one. The Consortium is really behaving as a true community, which is an obvious key to success.
The development of end user-oriented products is also reaching its goals. The new EUFGIS Information System has been finalised, with the definition of all the indices that enter the description of Genetic Conservation Units. The process that led to this list of indices needs to be highlighted: scientists, data scientists, information technologists, and end-users all worked together to compile a balanced set of diversity indicators from multiple sources, taking into account the needs expressed by end-users; this outreach effort materialised in the very detailed and expansive Data Dictionary that was built during the process of the creation of the new EUFGIS.
Finally, the EUFGIS User Interface is now accessible to beta-testers for feedback and training. The new EUFGIS holds vast amounts of information, from environmental indices obtained through remote sensing, through modelled predictions of response of trees to extreme events, to eco-physiological traits to genomic data and estimators of (adaptive) diversity. It is a complex mass of data, yet presented in a simple, intuitive way.
FORGENIUS has moved beyond the state of the art under multiple respects. Modelling of drought resilience has developed entirely new tools taking into account genetic diversity, forest health models have been improved, mechanisms of drought resistance have been elucidated. The genetic bases of the adaptive response to climate change have been clarified, highlighting the importance of local adaptive trajectories. New methods to speed up the phenotypic characterisation of trees and forests have been developed. The newly accumulated information has been converted into a flexible Information System, the use of which, through a querable data base, will change the life of conservation and management practitioners, as well as of scientists, for years to come, setting new standards for the description of the properties of Forest Genetic Resources.