Six ‘forgotten’ arable crops will be making a comeback in European fields over the next four years, driven by a new project called CROPDIVA (Climate Resilient Orphan croPs for increased DIVersity in Agriculture). The crops concerned are oats, triticale, buckwheat, faba beans, lupins and hull-less barley.
The Horizon 2020 project has almost €6 million of European Union funding and brings together 27 partners from 12 countries, including four very familiar to ENDURE (Denmark’s Aarhus University, Switzerland’s Agroscope, Germany’s Julius Kühn Institute and Stichting Wageningen Research from the Netherlands).
The project coordinator is Geert Haesaert from Belgium’s Ghent University. “All selected crops have a very broad genetic background that can be used to cross in important characteristics relating to factors such as resilience to stress and an improved nutritional value,” he told the University website.
“Moreover, these crops have major ecological benefits. Many of them produce nectar-rich flowers or fix air nitrogen, for example. This will lead to highly resilient agroecosystems with greater adaptability to climate change, a better use of genetic resources, and greater food diversity.”
The project will focus on:
The European Commission’s CORDIS website adds: “CROPDIVA findings will provide innovative solutions along the entire food and non-food chain to enable biodiversity management at all levels, including diversifying the use of genetic resources, crop production systems, new food/non-food products and market opportunities, while satisfying producer and consumer requirements.”
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