Six new projects selected in the 3rd FACCE SURPLUS call
Six projects have been selected for funding in the 3rd FACCE SURPLUS call which aims to complete the portfolio of projects and fill remaining research gaps.
Increased demands for food, renewable energy and raw materials from biomass are among the “Great Challenges” for the 21st century. Almost five years ago, 21 European countries joined forces to tackle these challenges and formed a partnership within the frame of the Joint Programming Initiative on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change (FACCE-JPI).
The initiative was entitled FACCE SURPLUS and so far, 22 projects gathering researchers and stakeholders from all over Europe have been established to improve collaboration in the area of food and non-food biomass production and transformation systems.
Six additional projects are about to be launched as part of a third call. Based on the two previous calls, the FACCE SURPLUS partners decided in 2018 to further advance their successful funding scheme with a third call in order to complete the portfolio of projects and fill remaining research gaps.
Coordinator of the ERA-NET Cofund, Nicolas Tinois says:
- This call aims to support innovation, value creation and sustainable intensification of biomass production, taking into account the required economic, environmental and social conditions and resilience to climate change. We expect the projects to explore options on how to utilise all the biomass from agricultural land, uncultivated land and forestry with a holistic view with regard to food and non-food systems. In line with the previous calls it is expected that the projects will build upon the research already conducted in FACCE SURPLUS and under the broader umbrella of FACCE-JPI.
The six projects have been chosen among 28 submitted full proposals and 36 pre-proposals. The total requested funding is approx. 5mio.€.
The six new projects are:
- UpWaste: Sustainable up-cycling of agricultural residues: modular cascading waste conversion system
- DEMETER: Resource efficiency optimisation of 2nd class vegetables via biorefinery solutions to improve sustainability in the agrifood chain and climate change resilience
- MISCOMAR+: Miscanthus for Contaminated and Marginal Lands PLUS
- BioFoodOnMars: Biofortified and climate-resilient food and fodder production on marginal soils
- BioSUNmulant: Innovative applications from sunflower by-products
- OPTIEBERRY: Optimal use of by-products of berry fruit production
