Project description
Bringing the EMPHASIS research infrastructure to operation
The European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) has identified plant phenotyping as a priority and thus integrated the research infrastructure EMPHASIS into its roadmap. Since plant production is central in agriculture, food systems and bioeconomy applications, plant phenotyping is essential to addressing future challenges and most of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, like feeding a growing population and ensuring sustainability of agricultural land. The EU-funded EMPHASIS-GO project will bring the pan-European research infrastructure into operation, based on the achievements of the preparatory project EMPHASIS-Prep. It will lay the ground for providing services around plant phenotyping to researchers in Europe. Moreover, it will implement the legal, financial and organisational framework of EMPHASIS while also providing first services to researchers.
Objective
Plant production is central in agriculture, food systems, and in bio-economy applications, which is essential to address future challenges related to growing population, climate change, scarcity of agricultural land, loss of biodiversity etc. Integrated solutions and new technologies are needed to improve plant production, based on knowledge-driven innovation to the farming sector, agricultural and seed industries. Therein, the analysis of crop performance with respect to structure, function, quality and interaction with the environment (“phenotyping”) is key for the exploitation of crop genetic diversity required for the enhancement of plant productivity and progress in plant breeding. This requires substantial and concerted action to develop and to increase the availability of phenotyping infrastructures. The European Strategic Forum for Research Infrastructure (ESFRI) has thus identified “Plant Phenotyping” as a priority for the European research area and EMPHASIS has been listed on the ESFRI ROADMAP, addressing primary plant production as the key step in future European agro-food-systems and bio-economy transformation. The Preparatory Phase project (EMPHASIS-PREP, 2017-2021) paved the way towards implementation and subsequent operation. It developed a business plan and established the Interim General Assembly, as main decision-making body, comprising high-level representation from policy and science. EMPHASIS-GO will build on the successful work in the Preparatory Phase, extend the membership with partners from eleven countries fully committed to support EMPHASIS and bring EMPHASIS into operation to fully explore the potential European plant phenotyping by i) developing and deploying services, ii) implement the legal, financial and organisational framework and iii) consolidating the business plan for future operations.
Fields of science
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencesnutrition
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesecologyecosystems
- social scienceseconomics and businesseconomicsbioeconomy
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesagricultureagronomyplant breeding
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesclimatologyclimatic changes
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-CSA - HORIZON Coordination and Support ActionsCoordinator
52428 Julich
Germany