Projects and Infrastructures connected with METROFOOD-RI

AQUASERV – Research Infrastructure services for sustainable aquaculture, fisheries, ecological restoration and the blue economy - is a project funded by Horizon Europe. The overall objectives of the project are to bring together, improve, integrate and tailor IR capabilities (including facilities, tools and expertise) and through the provision of transnational access (on-site or remote) and/or virtual, significantly promote scientific progress and promote and facilitate the implementation of the Common Fisheries Policy, the Farm to Fork strategy, the Sustainable Blue Economy and the European Green Pact. The project offers scientists from academia and business remote and on-site transnational (TA) and virtual (VA) access to an advanced set of European research infrastructures and its nodes related to research and management of marine and freshwater biological resources, food and biotechnology.

EOSC Beyond: advancing innovation and collaboration for research is a project funded by Horizon Europe. The project's overall objective is to advance Open Science and innovation in research in the context of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) by providing new EOSC Core capabilities that allow scientific applications to find, compose, and access multiple Open Science resources and offer them as integrated capabilities to researchers. EOSC Beyond utilizes the expertise of EOSC Nodes and partners to develop solutions for federated digital infrastructures, aligning with data space requirements across sectors. It promotes Open Science in data-intensive research by facilitating resource discovery, access, and reuse among scientific communities and organizations worldwide.

FHERITALE - Food, Health and Environment Research Infrastructures to Tackle Emerging Priorities - is a project funded by Horizon Europe. It seeks to provide the European research community with a comprehensive overview of technologies and services relevant to understanding the impact of artificial materials (plastics, micro-plastics, nano-plastics, and biomaterials) on health, food and the environment. The project consortium brings together nine partners from across Europe, including four ESFRI research infrastructures across different domains. FHERITALE's objectives include analysing the current landscape of available services, also beyond its partnership, identifying gaps, and engaging with stakeholders in the research community. The interdisciplinary nature of the cluster of identified technologies will connect health, food, and environment research, constituting one of the first examples of practical application of the “One Health” approach.

AgroServ - Integrated SERVices supporting a sustainable AGROecological transition – is a project funded by Horizon Europe. The project aims to support research and innovation, providing customized services integrated by different research infrastructures (RI), to achieve sustainable and resilient agriculture and support agro-ecological transition. In particular, the project aims to develop advanced knowledge of agronomic and husbandry practices, focusing on risks to agro-ecosystems and supporting the development of new agro-ecological practices by fostering transdisciplinarity and integrating the socio-economic dimension, including interconnections with food security and nutrition, Human and animal health, ecosystem services, intelligent innovation, sustainable food chain, and man-animal welfare, in line with the "One Health" approach. This implies a transdisciplinary approach, involving society and promoting co-creation approaches through the organization of Living Labs.

DRG4FOOD - Empowering a fair and responsible European FoodRegister, fostering citizen sovereignty and creating a data-driven food system - is a project funded by Horizon Europe. Designing for trust, the project will promote values such as responsibility, privacy and user sovereignty. To create a data-driven food system, the project aims to set new standards by aligning with the European Digital Rights and Principles and the Digital Responsibility Goals. It works on a clear strategic roadmap (a new virtual food system), a set of technological enablers, a demonstration of solutions, a structured funding programme with open calls, and measures to guide and support the food ecosystem of third party beneficiaries, citizens, stakeholders.

ECO-READY - Achieving Ecological Resilient Dynamism for the European food system through consumer-driven policies, socio-ecological challenges, biodiversity, data-driven policy, sustainable futures - is a project funded by Horizon Europe. Through its real-time surveillance system, the Observatory, which is accessible as an online platform or mobile app, the project will ensure that future policymaking and monitoring reflect the interests of Europe's farmers and society. The platform will include policy recommendations, contingency plans and resilience strategies developed by 10 Living Labs and provide real-time assessments for the food system, with forecasts updated frequently and consistently. The mobile app will empower citizens to actively engage in policymaking and interact directly with the scientific community, farmers, the agri-food industry and policy makers.

FOODSAFETY4EU - Multi-stakeholder Platform for Food Safety in Europe - is a collaborative action funded by Horizon 2020 to support the European Commission (EC) in shaping the Food Safety System of the future. The project Is focused on designing, developing and releasing a multi-stakeholder platform for the future European Food Safety System (FSS), by structuring a participatory process, that sustains a responsive and adaptive community of FSS actors.
The FS4EU project led to the creation of The EU Food Safety Platform in 2023. This platform is the new one-shot place to explore the Food Safety, with tools, resources, contacts, links that will facilitate our members to improve the Food Safety and make a more sustainable world. The platform involves a network of over 80 support partners from different European areas who collaborate within the platform by sharing news and information, and participating in surveys and consultations, providing a regional/national view in the formation of the food safety system.

FoodTraNet - Advanced research and Training Network in Food quality, safety and security - is a European project funded by Horizon 2020. FoodTraNet is designed to provide high-level training of a new generation of high achieving early-stage researchers (ESRs) in a common platform of advanced mass spectrometry tools for food quality, safety and security. FoodTraNet will cover techniques including stable isotopes, target, suspect, non-target screening and mass spectrometry imaging to obtain the following objectives: 1) identify biomarkers and bioactive compounds to assure food quality and traceability; 2) characterize novel foods to support food safety and security; and 3) developed and characterize new products based on the latest advances in nanotechnology: edible photonic barcodes; nano-sensors; multi-functional polymer nanostructured materials; and new, active and intelligent packaging.

SIMBA - Sustainable Innovation of Microbiome Applications in Food Systems - is a European innovation project funded by Horizon 2020. It takes a holistic and innovative approach to developing microbial solutions to enhance food and nutrition security. The project specifically focuses on identifying viable land and aquatic microbiomes that can contribute to the sustainability of European agriculture and aquaculture.

PROVIDE - Protein and biomolecules sources for nutritional security and biodiversity of bakery products in a circular food system – is a project funded by the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL-GE), the Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies (MIPAAF - IT), the Executive Unit for Financing Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation (UEFISCDI - RO), Ministère de l’Education Nationale, de la Formation Professionnelle, de l’Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche Scientifique (MENFPESRS – MO), the Research Council of Norway (NRC - NO). The project focused on the exploitation and use of by-products from the food processing industry for the production of high-value-added bakery products, based on "green" innovation processes to promote circularity in agri-food systems.

i-NEXT-Discovery – Infrastructure for transnational access and discovery in structural biology – is a project funded by Horizon 2020. The project aims to increase the impact of structural biology on innovative biomedical, biotechnology, food science, and biomaterials research. It aims to enable access to structural biology research infrastructures for all European researchers, especially non-experts in structural biology. For that reason, it brings together a diversity of large research facilities and other groups in a single consortium that combines thirty well-known European academic structural biology groups that share their expertise and equipment for state-of-the-art X-ray techniques, ultra-high field NMR, modern cryo-electron microscopy, and molecular biophysics experiments.

FNS-Cloud - Food Nutrition Security Cloud - FNS-Cloud – is a project funded by Horizon 2020. The project aimed to launch a first-generation cloud solution, federating existing and emerging datasets, which would demonstrate how the fragmentation of data on diet, health, and consumer behaviour, as well as sustainable agriculture and the bio-economy, might be overcome. To showcase progress, tools and services were refined or developed, resulting in seven demonstrators in three broad areas (agrifood, intake and lifestyle, non-communicable disease [NCDs], and healthy diets).