The organisers explain that the purpose is: “Improving the capacity of the European Research Area to provide practical and policy-relevant knowledge on how agrobiodiversity can improve resilience of agroecosystems, especially those most at risk, reinvigorate farming practices to increase ecological connectivity and improve biodiversity at landscape level, and to monitor and identify the opportunities and obstacles to diversification."

Proposals submitted to the call must address one of the three topics:

1. Agricultural genetic resources: This includes research aiming to broaden the genetic base of crops to improve functional traits fit to sustainable food systems, and to increase tolerances to environmental conditions related to the climate change.

2. Agricultural practices and farm models: This includes research leading to new agricultural practices, technologies, decision support systems and business models that improve agricultural production and soil quality, creating economic, social, and environmental value through greater diversity of plant species and wider functional and response diversity.

3. Agrobiodiversity and territorial systems: This includes research leading to an increased agrobiodiversity at landscape level contributing also to the regeneration of low-quality agricultural habitats, to the enhancement of ecological connectivity and to a better understanding of the links between farm diversity and landscape complexity.

For more information:

• Read more online here
• Download the pre-announcement:
  Pre-announcement_agrobiodiversitycall_DRAFT_v5 [pdf - 265.97 kB]