www.checkbiotech.org ; www.raupp.info ; www.czu.cz

Europe has a long tradition of innovation in food production, leading to
significant breakthroughs in yield increase and quality improvement in
European crops.
The expected growth of the human population and the increase of the average
level of welfare in the coming decades will impose an increasing demand for
food, feed and energy. At the same time, there is a growing awareness of the
potential impacts on the environment and the need to develop sustainable
production systems for water, fertiliser, herbicide and pesticide use.

Collaborative research efforts and joint investments in large-scale
technologies will create the critical mass that Europe needs in order to
sustain its competitiveness in this area. This will facilitate a stepping up
from national to multilateral coordination, thereby reducing redundancy and
maximising the returns on investments in plant sciences.

To address these ambitions, the ERA-NET Plant Genomics (ERA-PG) was launched
in 2004 with coordination funding of ?2.2 million for 4 years from the EU?s
Sixth Framework Programme. It was one of the first networks to receive
funding under the ERA-NET scheme which seeks to strengthen the European
Research Area (ERA).

ERA-PG is coordinated by NGI/NWO from the Netherlands, drawing its original
partners from Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy,
Norway, Spain, and the UK. Since then, the network has been enlarged to
encompass Bulgaria, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and Israel.

ERA-PG started with a large information gathering exercise which mapped out
the landscape of research activities and the economic impact of plant
genomics. Researchers and science policy-makers were brought together to
build common ground for joint strategic and to perform a study leading to
the development of common framework mechanisms and best practices. In
February 2006, ERA-PG launched its first joint call for research with a
budget of over ?30 million, receiving more than 100 pre-proposals. This was
one of the largest ERA-NET coordinated research programmes.

[www.epsoweb.org]