Agroforestery (AF) has already proven its potential for farm sustainability, climate change mitigation & adaptation, biodiversity preservation, and soil conservation. However, AF performances are context-dependent, and many barriers hinder its adoption, such as lack of tools for decision-making, assessing economic, environmental, social benefits, and monitoring of policies and their impact on AF. DigitAF will boost AF implementation in the EU and beyond thanks to the co-development of digital tools tailored to the needs and concerns of DigitAF target groups. To engage actors whose decisions impact AF implementation,DigitAF will: (1) Support policy-actors at various scales to design more efficient policies supporting AF adoption & carbon farming; (2) Provide tools helping practitioners (farmers…) deal with the complexity of AF systems. DigitAF will allow them to optimize the design and management of agroforestry systems at field and farm scale; (3) Enhance capacities of actors to assess, quantify and market the economic, environmental and social performance and benefits of AF. The end-user centred multi-actor approach of DigitAF will be made possible by implementing 6 living labs (LL) in Italy, Germany, Netherland, United Kingdom, Finland and the Czech Republic. Open-source tools will be co-developed thanks to the existing or novel practical knowledge, scientific evidence and models. They will be tested with the end-users from LL and improved thanks to their feedback. Larger dissemination to target groups will be ensured through DigitAF partners gathering members and networks across EU. DigitAF consortium brings together 25 partners from 20 countries from the EU, Associated Countries and beyond, composed of RTOs (9), universities (5), SMEs (6), European and international organisations (4), NGO and cooperative (1). DigitAF consortium and the LL cover all AF value chain actors, thus efficiently supporting AF implementation in the EU.

Forestry sector in Europe hasn’t identified yet a common educational path to get the qualification of “Forestry Operator”, neither a system of mutual recognition of competences. Like is also outlined in the EC communication “A new EU Forest Strategy: for forests and the forest-based sector”, 2013, “A strategy for forests and the forest sector is necessary since there is no common EU forest policy or guiding framework for forest-related issues. “project aims to promote the exchange of good practices and techniques with other European countries in order to improve the level of professionalism and competitiveness of forest workers (at cross-border level), raising knowledge and safety standards of workers as well as the quality of their interventions. The objective is to discuss the possibility to create a standard level of competences and skills of forestry workers, valid across national borders and to work together on joint projects aiming at promoting innovation and professionalism. Debates will be channeled into three levels: technical, legislative and in the field of innovation and sustainability. Technical changes concern the contents of training programmes and skills required to forestry operators. Legislative adaptations are needed to harmonize authorizations to emit diploma and certificate. Though 6 transnational meetings partners will be able to define a common strategy to harmonize training systems and recognition of competences, aiming, on the ther side, to foster innovation and the introduction of sustainable tools. The transnationality of the project will lead to exchange practices and experiences related to sustainable and innovative tools and techniques being attended in each country partner, resulting in an enhancement of their capacities. Furthermore, due to the increased mobility of forestry workers, the internationality of partners is very appreciated, on one side for linking VET schools from different countries and potentially increase students’ mobility, on the other side to compare and align competences on crucial topics.

The mission of EARTHONE is to address the pressing issue of preserving and enhancing Earth's natural terrestrial GHG sinks by understanding how different drivers, including socio-economic, demographic, and physical constraints affect GHG fluxes. The project adopts a unique and interdisciplinary approach, integrating state-of-the-art data-driven technology with regional context (with a special focus on the most vulnerable areas in south and Mediterranean Europe including Spain, Greece, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia and North Macedonia) through living labs to offer effective multi-target solutions and guideline to all stakeholders in LULUCF topics.

IWMPRAISE aims to support the implementation of Integrated Weed Management (IWM). IWMPRAISE will demonstrate that adoption of IWM supports more sustainable cropping systems both agronomically and environmentally, which are resilient to external impacts without jeopardising profitability or the steady supply of food, feed and biomaterials. IWMPRAISE aims to develop, test and assess management strategies delivered across whole cropping systems for four contrasting management scenarios representing typical crops in Europe. The specific objectives are to 1) quantify and address current socio-economic and agronomic barriers to the uptake of IWM 2) develop and optimise novel alternative weed control methods and create a ‘tool box’ of validated IWM methods 3) design, demonstrate and assess the performance and environmental and economic sustainability of IWM strategies and 4) make results available to end users. The development of IWM strategies are supported by WPs delivering practical knowledge and tools as well as knowledge and tools for assessing and disseminating the strategies, ensuring a vertical integration of the project. One WP is devoted to to the complex interaction between soil tillage, weed management and soil fertility. IWMPRAISE provides advances beyond the state-of-the-art within several areas ensuring that the overall goal of the project, to provide practical solutions to the end users, will be fulfilled. IWMPRAISE combines activities centred around R & D providing the tools for developing IWM strategies with activities that adopt the “interaction innovation model” involving end users and other actors in a partnership with public research institutes and private SMEs adopting a truly multi-actor approach. IWMPRAISE combines innovation potential for novel and sustainable weed management methods with implementation potential and will therefore address and provide impact within all areas listed in the call.

Forests provide essential societal services: in Europe, they cover 33% of land area and sequester 719 million tonnes CO2; in the EU, they provide jobs to over 3 million people and revenue to 16 million forest owners. These services rely on rich Forest Genetic Resources (Forest GenRes), which are managed in a coordinated way in Europe. 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 collection of in situ Forest GenRes accessions (http://portal.eufgis.org/), called Genetic Conservation Units (GCUs). FORGENIUS will develop methods and tools for greater insight into the characteristics and the value of Forest GenRes accessions presently existing in 35 European countries, and linked through the EUFGIS Information System (http://portal.eufgis.eu). FORGENIUS will create novel services for users within and outside the conservation communities and will significantly increase and improve data quantity and quality in the European Forest Genetic Resources (Forest GenRes) information system that describes all accessions. The project’s newly developed services will also allow end-users to characterise prospective new genetic conservation units. To fulfil these needs, FORGENIUS will use state-of-the-art indices ranging from genomics and phenotyping to remote sensing and predictive models. FORGENIUS will achieve the following goals: i) assessing genetic, phenotypic, and environmental diversity, as well as resilience of the GCU collection under climate change; ii) providing scientific evidence to support management decisions that promote the resilience and adaptability of the collection; iii) characterising GCUs and their GenRes to identify high-quality germplasm for use in breeding and forest plantations; iv) creating innovative data accessibility and modelling services for users within and outside the Forest GenRes conservation communities.