BIOFECTOR is an integrated project with the aim to reduce input of mineral fertilisers in European agriculture by development of specifically adapted bio-effectors (BEs) to improve the efficiency of alternative fertilisation strategies, such as organic and low-input farming, use of fertilisers based on waste recycling products and fertiliser placement technologies. Bio-effectors addressed comprise fungal strains of Trichoderma, Penicillium and Sebacinales, as well as bacterial strains of Bacillus and Pseudomonades with well-characterized root growth promoting and nutrient-solubilising potential. Natural extraction products of seaweed, compost and plant extracts, as well as their purified active compounds with protective potential against biotic and abiotic stresses are also tested in various combinations. These features offer perspectives for a more efficient use of nutrients by strategic combination with the alternative fertilisation strategies. Maize, wheat and tomato are chosen as representative crops. Laboratory and European-wide field experiments assure product adaptation to the various geo-climatic conditions characteristic for European agriculture. The final goal is the development of viable alternatives to the conventional practice of mineral fertilisation as contribution to a more efficient management of the non-renewable resources of mineral nutrients, energy and water, to preserve soil fertility and to counteract the adverse environmental impact of agricultural production.
OPTIBIOCAT is a 48 months project aimed at developing biocatalysts based on feruloyl esterases (FAEs) and glucuronoyl esterases (GEs) for production of phenolic fatty- and sugar- esters with antioxidant activity for cosmetic industry, expanding the number/type of industrial biotransformations. Selected FAEs and GEs available within the consortium will be improved for their thermo- and solvent- resistance and substrate specificity by site-directed mutagenesis and directed evolution. Novel enzymes will be discovered by mining for new genes from available genomes. An inventory of novel FAEs and GEs will be developed including 50 fungal and 500 bacterial esterases, 25 site-directed and 20 directed evolved mutants. Enzymatic performances will be optimized to enhance the yield (up to the theoretical yield of 100%) and productivity (up to 0.5-1 g/l/h) of reactions giving the main targeted antioxidants: butyl ferulate, p-coumarate, caffeate, sinapate and 5-O-(trans-feruloyl)-arabinofuranose (using FAEs), glucuronate and benzyl glucuronate (using GEs). FAEs and GEs will be also tested for production of other compounds with improved biological activity and properties of hydrophilicity/hydrophobicity for cosmetic applications. Cost-effective methods will be developed for production of the new biocatalysts, in the g/L scale, and for their technical application to produce antioxidants for cosmetic industry, up to 20L. Enzyme immobilization will increase their recyclability up to ten cycles. The ability of the developed catalysts to work in conditions miming the industrial ones with reduced use of solvents and lower temperature than the chemical routes will be demonstrated. The techno-economic viability and environmental friendliness will be assessed considering a full industrial scale scenario. OPTIBIOCAT involves a highly skilled and multidisciplinary partnership of 16 partners from 8 EU countries, and it is a strongly industry driven project through the participation of 8 SMEs and 1 large company.
The project GRAIL has been build with 15 partners from 9 different countries with the aim of finalising the solutions given previously to the valorization of glycerol and transform then in valuable products in a biorefinery approach. The overall concept of GRAIL project is the use, exploitation and further development of the state of the art in the field of bio-based products from glycerol and the development research-driven cluster for the use of crude glycerol for the production of high-value platforms, as well as valued end products, harnessing the biotech processes. Therefore GRAIL project has a strong business focus and its ultimate goal is to set up implantation of biorefineries in close relationship with biodiesel. This project's aim is to develop a set of technologies for converting waste glycerol from biodiesel production in a biorefinery concept to end with products of high value such as 1,3 propanediol, Fatty acid glycerol formal esters, PolyHydroxyAlkanoates (PHA), Hydrogen and Ethanol, Synthetic coatings, powder coating resins, Secondary Glycerol Amine, Biobutanol, Trehalose, Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12), ß-carotene, Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), .The GRAIL project has designed an overall strategy based on three main pillars covering all the value chain: Pillar 1: Raw materials: Evaluation of crude glycerol and purification - Pillar 2: Product development: Research and development to transform crude glycerol into other high added value such as biofuels, green chemicals and food supplements - Pillar 3: Industrial feasibility aspects including economic and environmental evaluation. This pillar will take the results of GRAIL from the product development to the industrial site. To carry out that the technical feasibility will be study on a pilot plant in a Demonstration (and the results will be important to evaluate the LCA and the economic feasibility (WP6).
GRACE pursues two key research objectives: Firstly, it aims to provide comprehensive reviews of the existing evidence on the health, environmental and socio-economic impacts of GM plants - considering both risks and possible benefits. GRACEs review strategy will go beyond what has been done before. Reviews will be conducted in a systematic, transparent and inclusive way based on procedures originally developed for evidence-based medicine (systematic reviews). The results will be made accessible to the public via an open access database and other channels. Secondly, GRACE will test various types of animal feeding trials and alternative methods without the use of animals in order to determine how suitable they are and what useful scientific information they provide for health risk assessments of GM food and feed. At present there are different views at the EU level and between Member States on the need for and scientific value of such studies. The project will also check whether extended feeding trials can improve risk assessments compared to in-vitro, in-silico and omics methods available today. Transparency and user and stakeholder involvement and scrutiny are key features of GRACE. The project will be working closely with representatives from a broad range of stakeholder organisations as well as with professional risk assessors and risk managers. This includes planning and preparing the research activities as well as discussing the results and drawing conclusions. For this purpose, the GRACE project will organise workshops and conduct interviews and surveys and prepare feed-back reports to ensure that the information and the views of stakeholders can feed into this project. IFZ is leading the work package for user and stakeholder involvement and will also work on the core review process.
The current project proposal discloses a novel biorefinery process for a sustainable, waste free, low energy conversion route of negative value marine waste streams into high value, high performance chemical intermediates and products for the polymer industry. The project has a strong emphasis on technology development and transfer to low-tech and developing countries in the EU and associated ICPC and therefore will significantly contribute to the technological and economic leadership of the EU. The technologies disclosed in this project will foster the natural growth of sustainable economies in the EU and beyond by eliminating the need for fossil resources to preserve and exceed the current standard of living. The innovative technologies developed in this project will apply novel concepts for the production of bio-based platform chemicals that act as 'drop-ins' for existing and novel polymer production processes with high atom efficiencies. The unique assembly of the current consortium consisting of academics, SME's and large scale chemical industry partners, clearly has the scientific and technical expertise to rapidly transform laboratory based results into novel product lines at an accelerated time frame. As a part of the strategy the consortium has included Demonstration Activities as require by the FP7-KBBE-Call.
Die nachhaltige Produktion wichtiger Chemikalien, Lebensmittel- und Pharmazeutikakomponenten ist von hoher Bedeutung für die Gesellschaft und die Umwelt. Biotechnologische Produktionssysteme stellen eine sinnvolle Alternative zu den bisherigen, meist chemischen, Verfahren da. Die biotechnologische Produktionssysteme basieren jedoch bisher meist auf der Verwertung von Zuckern. Zucker, die aus Pflanzen gewonnen werden, benötigen kultivierbares Land, das mehr und mehr zur Gewinnung von Nahrungsmitteln benötigt wird. Methanol - mit einer weltweiten Produktionskapazität von mehr als 46 Millionen Tonnen pro Jahr - gilt als attraktiver alternativer Rohstoff für die biotechnologische Produktion von Spezial-, Fein- und Basischemikalien oder Kraftstoffen. Dies gilt insbesondere für den EU-Markt, wo die industrielle Biotechnologie noch durch strikte Preis- und Nutzungsregularien sowie Importlimitierungen von Agrargütern wie Mais oder Zucker behindert ist. Die Methanolversorgung kann sowohl auf fossilen, als auch auf erneuerbaren Ressourcen basieren, was es als flexiblen und nachhaltigen Rohstoff auszeichnet. In dem Projekt PROMYSE werden zum ersten Mal synthetisch-biologische Prinzipien für die Entwicklung von Zellfabriken angewendet um Methanol als generellen Rohstoff für die Produktion von Spezial- und Feinchemikalien verfügbar zu machen. Produktseitig liegt der Hauptfokus auf der Substanzklasse der Terpenoide.
The consortium will discover and carry to the stage of development candidates, plant derived small molecules with potential as new cosmetic and agrochemical agents. These compounds will derive from plants originating from major biodiversity hotspots in Europe, Africa, Latin America, and the Asia-Pacific region. The starting point of the project will be a diversity-oriented natural product library of 500 compounds from the existing compound repositories of three project partners. Screening of this compound library in assay panels for agrochemical (antifungal, herbicidal, insecticidal) and cosmetic properties (UV-protection, anti-aging, anti-hyper-pigmentation) will rapidly identify promising scaffolds. This knowledge will serve as entry points for a chemotaxonomy and chemo-diversity oriented collection of plants which are thought to contain structural variants and decorations of these scaffolds. A liquid library of 3600 extracts will be generated and screened. Stringent prioritization and profiling procedures will generate 300 compounds as focused sub-libraries around the privileged scaffolds. A state-of-the-art technology platform for miniaturized natural product discovery will be used for the purpose. Evaluation of these sub-libraries will lead to 30 compounds which will undergo advanced testing to qualify 5 compounds as development candidates for novel agrochemical and/or cosmetic agents with new or improved properties over existing active ingredients. An additional outcome of the project will be an extract library with a unprecedented level of associated spectroscopic information and metadata, to be used for future purposes. The high-caliber consortium brings together international leaders in small molecule natural products, bio-prospection, leading industries in agro-chemistry, cosmetics, and spectroscopic data management and analysis. Prime Contractor: University Athens (National and Kapodistrian Univ.); Athen; Graces/Hellas.
The Catch-C project assesses the farm-compatibility of Best Management Practices (BMPs) that aim to promote productivity, climate change mitigation, and soil quality. These are the three overall goals of sustainable soil management. Catch-C will first (WP2) set up a typology of the main farm types and agro-ecological zones across Europe. This frame, coupled to a pan-European database of socio-economic and biophysical data, will be used for spatially organising the information collected on current management; and for up-scaling the impacts expected from changes in management. Biophysical impacts of management practices will be assessed (WP3) primarily from a large set of current field experiments, executed by the participants. BMPs will be formulated, along with their trade-offs and synergies between productivity, climate change mitigation, and soil quality. Farmers, however, often do not adopt BMPs. Identifying the barriers against adoption, and formulating ways to remove these, are core activities of the project (WP4). Catch-C will survey farmer views on BMPs in all participant countries, assess costs and benefits of implementation, identify technical and ecological bottlenecks preventing adoption, develop a decision support tool, and prioritize innovation requirements to address bottlenecks. Policy measures can promote adoption in various ways, such as voluntary measures, regulation, and economic incentives. In interaction with policy makers, Catch-C will develop (WP5) guidelines for policies that will support the adoption of BMPs; and that are consistent with regional agro-ecological and farming contexts. Dissemination (WP6) includes scientific publication; discussing project results with farmers and policy makers; making information about BMPs and their adoption available to a wider audience; and stimulating awareness about the pros and cons of BMPs for different farm types and environments in participant countries.
The provision of public goods (including landscape services) in rural areas is recognized as one of the key topics for the future of agriculture and rural policy. Agriculture plays a major role in landscape management through its complex interlinkages with landscape features. In turn, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) remains an important driver of landscape management due to its importance as a determinant of farming activities in the EU. The main objective of the CLAIM project is to provide the knowledge base to support an effective CAP policy design in the direction of improved landscape management, particularly providing insights into the ability of landscape to contribute to the production of added value for society in rural areas. CLAIM is focused in particular on understanding and enhancing the contribution of landscapes management to socio-economic development and agricultural competitiveness in rural areas. This will be based on a pragmatic consideration of landscape services and their analysis through a mixed-method approach, taking into account the wider EU policy strategies (in particular related to innovation and the bioeconomy). The main expected result of the CLAIM project is an evidence-based policy support framework on the different and possible contributions of agriculture and the CAP to landscape management. The framework will be mainly developed and validated through a set of 9 case studies, a strong involvement of stakeholders at different territorial levels and a wide coverage of the perspectives of EU and candidate countries. The framework will finally take the practical form of a web-based manual to be implemented in accordance to stakeholders needs and indications.
EnviGuard is a response to the growing need for accurate real time monitoring of the seas/ocean and the aquaculture industries need for a reliable and cost-effective risk management tool. The implementation of the EnviGuard system will allow for early detection of harmful algae blooms (HAB), chemical contaminants, viruses and toxins thus preventing economic losses. The modular EnviGuard system will be made up of three different sensor modules (microalgae / pathogens, i.e. viruses & bacteria / toxins & chemicals), that are connected to the common interface 'EnviGuard Port' which collects and sends the information to a server. The data will be accessible through a website in real-time. The modularity of the system enables an individual setup for each purpose thus offering a tailor-made solution for each future client.
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