The first of our in person CAPITALISE Expert Stakeholder Workshops took place in Brussels in May 2023 as part of future Research Road mapping activities of the CAPITALISE project. Taking part were crop breeders, growers, consumer representatives, as well as academic scientists and EU project officers.
The workshop was focussed on the Research and Innovation needs for Future Crops. Two clear goals were to set for the workshop:
- To identify the needs of industry to feed into a Roadmap and SRA for the EC.
- To identify and address barriers to translating academic research to crop breeders.
The workshop highlighted the need for better efficiencies and resilience in crops to sustain and improve yields; the need to embrace new technologies; the importance of translation of research and innovation to crop breeding programmes; the potential of genomic diversity for crop improvement; the need to design crops for multiple uses outside of food, and the need for education, legislation and awareness around products derived from New Breeding technologies.
The work from the workshop will feed into the strategic research agenda for CAPITALISE and the Research Roadmap. A follow workshop is planned for next year and together with the survey results will help refine the Roadmap.
