Strawberry is fundamental crop for Mediterranean countries, the fruits have unique flavour and precious nutritional properties and their economic value is extremely high. Growing healthy strawberry using sustainable protection solutions that preserve the fruits quality and yield, and respect human health and environment is a challenging task. In this project complementary expertise of researchers from public and private institutions from Italy, Spain, France, Morocco and Turkey are joined in the effort to develop innovative tools, protocols and strategies suited to revise the pathogen control strategies in view of innovative concepts of protection management. Here, conventional instruments (e.g. traditional breeding programs made with local germplasm) are integrated with New Breeding Techniques (NBT) able to develop new plants and products that counteract the most aggressive pathogens and the new phytosanitary emergences. The Med-Berry project aims are 4: 1: Resistant genes identification and exploitation. Local resistant germplasm will be used to develop resistant varieties against fungal diseases 2: Development of NBT protocols, and RNA interference molecules. Intragenesis protocols will be applied to study the role of key strawberry defense genes to increase fruit resistance. Specific dsRNA molecules will be designed to target pathogen key genes by topical application on plants (SIGS). 3. Socio-economic impact analysis. The economic sustainability of the developed solutions and their social acceptability across the Mediterranean countries will be evaluated to obtain realistic measure of the potential application of the new strategies. 4. Dissemination. Large effort will be put to disseminate results in different farming and industrial contexts and to share the newly achieved knowledge through the strawberry research network and the organization of training activities.

The project objective deals with the introduction of Mediterranean sea fennel (C. maritimum L) germplasm well adapted to climate change and Mediterranean conditions (water shortage, low soil fertility, high salinity) for the development of new sustainable organic cropping systems, able to increase the resilience of the agro livelihood system based on agroecological principles, that contribute to the zero-pollution ambition, and to cope with limited resources and environmental constrains, with the final objectives of enhancing food production stability over time as well as increasing farmers’ incomes. Specific objectives of the project are: i) selection of sea fennel ecotypes, well adapted to the Mediterranean climate; (ii) introduction of sustainable farming systems for production of organic sea fennel crop in the Mediterranean; ii) development of new/improved high value products from the organic sea fennel crops; iii) valorization of sea fennel by-products for production of functional food ingredients/nutraceuticals/soil amendments; (iv) demonstration of socio-economic benefits, environmental impacts and sustainability of the proposed innovations; (iv) dissemination of sustainable halophyte-based cropping solutions and products in the Mediterranean. These objectives will be reached thanks to a strong synergy between 9 Partners from 6 Mediterranean countries (IT, FR, HR, GR, TN, TR), including Public Universities and Research Institutes, a Research foundation, a farm producing sea fennel crops and sea fennel-based foods. Different test sites across the Mediterranean will be used for selection of sea fennel ecotypes with the highest nutritional/biological potential. Selected ecotypes will be assayed in demo and open field. After multiple analyses, the new organic crops and their by-products will be exploited for the formulation of new foods and food ingredients/nutraceuticals/soil amendments, respectively. The socio-economic and environmental impacts of the proposed innovations will be evaluated. The Project relates to PRIMA 2021 -Section 2 – Thematic Area 2, Topic 2.2.1. The project addresses all the specific challenges of this thematic area by: I. introducing more sustainable agriculture and food production systems with more efficient use of a natural resource (sea fennel) with a high climate change resilience/adaptation, high economic potential; II. improving economic and social resilience of Mediterranean smallholder farming systems to climate change; III. contributing to the zero waste farming systems target; IV. decreasing use of chemical inputs; V. increasing income of the farmers from biodiversity use, improved farming techniques and organic certification; VI. promoting youth engagement and women empowering; VII. encouraging consumption of food produced using more sustainable practices.

The purpose of this application is to set up a preliminary organizational process with a view to create a network of partners capable of successfully responding to the European call: MSCA-ITN-ETN European Training Networks (part of the Sklodowska-Curie Actions). The aim of the WETLANDSPACE project is to create a European and international network bringing scientists and stakeholders together to train high level experts capable to help wetland adaptive management in different socio-economic, political, cultural and biophysical complex and changing contexts. WETLANDSPACE will concretely integrate science and end-user needs to train early stage researchers (ESR) who will define and implement different parameters and indicators of importance for wetland socio-ecosystem processes targeted to the issues of stakeholders and end-users. This project proposes the innovative solution of a highly collaborative working to explore diverse wetland socio-ecosystems conditions and development with a particular emphasis on incorporating perception across various stakeholder groups. ESRs will optimize close and continuous collaboration and networking to select the most purposeful modeling approach using open access tools and will integrate their results in a simulation platform to help management decision. The unique learning environment will enhance career perspectives of the ESRS who will be prepared to participate to the effort at different institutional levels by providing explicit guidance to help adaptive management to be tailored to specific contexts. Research will focus on boreal, temperate and tropical sites in Europe and Africa.

Using existing traditional Euro-Mediterranean know-how and recent developments in the field of biotechnology of aquatic microorganisms, our project aims at studying, designing, and disseminating a local circular strategy for rural wastewater treatment with minimal renewable energy input that will supply valuable goods and services (clean irrigation water, fertilizers, phytostimulants, etc…) to vulnerable rural communities. The intensive utilization of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides for agriculture, together with largescale livestock farms, in the Euro-Mediterranean area, are contributing to the pollution of rural waters (relevant to nitrogen contamination). However, rural wastewater treatment in Euro-Mediterranean rural areas faces significant barriers such as high-cost, ineffective processes, or managing capacity. Conventional wastewater treatment processes such as activated sludge system are not applicable due to high investment and operation costs. Alternative processes (constructed wetlands and reed bed systems) exist but they are low efficient, and they do not allow the production of quality biomass that can add an economic value to the process and reduce costs. The WABA project principal goal is to develop an alternative eco-friendly and sustainable wastewater treatment process for rural areas based on a microalgae-bacteria consortium. The potential of microalgae for bioremediation of wastewater has recently received considerable interest. Compared to physical and chemical treatment processes, algae based treatment can potentially achieve nutrient removal in a less expensive and ecologically safer way with the added benefits of resource recovery and recycling. However, no study has analyzed the energetic benefits and techno-economic limitations of this concept in the context of Euro-Mediterranean rural areas. Bacteria-algae consortia can enjoy most of metabolic features of both components, and are potentially economically sustainable, thanks to their capacity to operate with minimal natural inputs such as sunlight, atmospheric CO2 and nutrients from wastewaters. Thus, this system can be energetically efficient, and ecologically friendly. The project will study the relationship between algae and bacteria to understand how we can improve this partnership and maximize non-energy intensive treatments of rural wastewater, combined with the production of algae-based agronomical useful products. Our preliminary data show that specific microbial consortia are able to uptake nitrogen better than algae on their own, thereby increasing removal nitrogen from wastewater, and decreasing eutrophication index. We will study the relationship between these organisms to understand and improve the removal of nitrogen and other pollutants. These consortia will be then fed with wastewater and the pollutant removal efficiency evaluated. A novel process will be developed to combine optimum consortia growth and wastewater bioremediation. Robust analytical methods based on FTIR spectroscopy will be developed to assess the contribution of the various components to the consortium, and further determine and monitor the biomass quality. The biomass generated will be evaluated as biofertilizer and biostimulant in a local agriculture context. Importantly, we will also perform optimization studies in order to improve the energy efficiency of the method and reduce the costs. Finally, the impact on rural economy will be assessed in two case studies (France and Morocco), and compared to current remediation systems