About the project
Title: Exploiting the untapped potential of fruit tree wild diversity for sustainable agriculture
Akronym: FruitDiv
Project number: 101133964 — FRUITDIV — HORIZON-CL6-2023-BIODIV-01
Project duration: January 2024 - December 2028
Budget: overall 6 mio €
Cofinancing: 100 % European Commission
Partnership: 26 partners, from 10 EU countries and 4 other European countries
Lead partner: INRAE - Institut national de recherche pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement (FR)
The overall objective of FruitDiv is to exploit the untapped potential of fruit tree wild diversity for sustainable agriculture.
Crop wild relatives (CWR)
CWRs are wild plant species closely related to cultivated crops. They hold important potential as a source of genetic diversity, offering agronomic and nutritional traits like pest and disease resistance, tolerance to salinity and drought, and adaptability to marginal lands or fluctuating climatic conditions affecting fruit quality and production. Harnessing this genetic diversity is crucial for enhancing crop improvement and ensuring sustainable agricultural practices.
By conserving and using genetic resources from CWRs, more resilient and productive crops can be developed to tackle global climate challenges and meet the demands of food security and better nutrition. This approach aligns with the goals of the European Green Deal, and the Biodiversity and Farm to Fork strategies, aiming to reduce pesticide use.
In the realm of fruit production, CWRs are particularly significant. Current fruit production systems rely heavily on a limited number of elite cultivars selected for high production, prolonged fruit transportation, and shelf life, with decreased resistance to pests and diseases over time. However, the potential impact of biodiversity, especially in low-input farming, remains largely overlooked and requires further exploration.
FruitDiv
In this context, the FruitDiv project will explore the potential of fruit tree CWR for Sustainable Agriculture. FruitDiv aims to monitor, characterise, use, and conserve the diversity of fruit tree CWR, with a particular emphasis on pome (Malus, Pyrus) and stone (Prunus) fruits.
Project activities are organised through eight workpackages. Six of those are focused on research activities while the remaining two relate to communication and dissemination activities and project coordination.
The research will be carried out through the following main activity areas:
- Establish a CWR inventory and ensure knowledge.
- Conduct CWR genotypic characterisation.
- Ex-situ phenotyping CWRs for traits important for different end users and resilient fruit production systems.
- Integrated multiomics resources for data analysis, visualisation and sharing.
- Introduction of CWR in Multiomics-based methods to integrate CWR in pre-breeding programs.
- Valuation and plans for sustainable conservation of CWRs.
Project poster (click)