Synthetic Meiosis, Alternative Regeneration strategies, innovative Tools for Editing and targeting Regulatory regions in FRUIT cropsbroad
SMARTER FRUIT · Horizon Europe grant · 2026-10-01–2030-09-30
EC contribution
Total cost
Beneficiaries
About the data
Source: CORDIS (official EU open data), Horizon Europe. Framework HORIZON · call HORIZON-EIC-2025-PATHFINDERCHALLENGES-01 · scheme HORIZON-EIC · topic HORIZON-EIC-2025-PATHFINDERCHALLENGES-01-01. CORDIS record →
Objective
With the world’s population steadily rising and the impacts of climate change intensifying, agriculture stands at a critical turning point. The fruit industry now faces pressing challenges that threaten both its growth and long-term sustainability. These include: i) unpredictable weather, increasing droughts and floods that can affect yield and quality of fruit crops; ii) pest and disease outbreaks, as climate change creates favorable conditions for invasive pests and the emergence of new plant diseases, iii) scarcity of resources, driven by reduced water availability, soil degradation and loss of arable land. These challenges lie at the core of traditional fruit tree breeding programs. The development of characterizable offspring typically requires several years. Although conventional breeding and mutagenesis have substantially contributed to the development of improved varieties, meeting past demands of consumers and growers for yield, quality, and emerging biotic and abiotic stresses due to climate change highlight the need for complementary, faster and more precise strategies. SMARTER-FRUIT aims to go beyond incremental improvements by developing and optimizing a suite of advanced NGT-based tools tailored to fruit tree crops. SMARTER-FRUIT integrates complementary methodologies to accelerate breeding and enhance resilience to combined climate stresses in fruit trees, while broadening genetic diversity to meet the regulatory requirements for NGTs.The SMARTER-FRUIT project pushes the boundaries of current plant breeding, laying the scientific foundation for the Future Technology of the 'Programmable Orchard' and on-demand genetic resilience for fruit crops.The long-term goal is to transform fruit trees—slow-growing, highly heterozygous, and recalcitrant—into adaptive systems capable of rapid and precise response to combined climate stresses. The scientific breakthrough lies in synergistically overcoming the historical bottlenecks of woody plant biotechnology.
Beneficiaries (4)
| Organisation | Country | Role | EC contribution | SME |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FONDAZIONE EDMUND MACH | IT | coordinator | €1,132,138 | |
| CONSIGLIO PER LA RICERCA IN AGRICOLTURA E L'ANALISI DELL'ECONOMIA AGRARIA | IT | participant | €888,710 | |
| INSTITUT NATIONAL DE RECHERCHE POUR L'AGRICULTURE, L'ALIMENTATION ET L'ENVIRONNEMENT | FR | participant | €883,924 | |
| EIGEN VERMOGEN VAN HET INSTITUUT VOOR LANDBOUW- EN VISSERIJONDERZOEK | BE | participant | €844,400 |
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