EU-Wide Advantages & Opportunities of the Call “Strengthening the EU crop breeding research and innovation ecosystem” (HORIZON-CL6-2025-02-FARM2FORK-09)

1. Single Market Access

• 450+ million potential end-users: A coordinated EU breeding roadmap can speed up simultaneous variety registration under the CPVO and national catalogues, enabling seed companies—especially SMEs—to commercialise new, resilient cultivars in all Member States without sequential national applications.

• Unified seed marketing rules (e.g. EU directives 2002/53/EC & 2002/55/EC) mean that once the grant networks have clarified testing & DUS/VCU data requirements, partners can launch improved varieties EU-wide, capturing economies of scale and reducing time-to-market by an estimated 18-24 months.

2. Cross-Border Collaboration & Knowledge Exchange

• Pan-European R&I platform: The CSA can knit together >120 public institutes, 3,000 private breeders and 34 ESFRI research infrastructures, creating the critical mass that no single country can mobilise.

• Climatic gradient testing: Joint field, greenhouse and in-silico trials from the Arctic Circle to the Mediterranean allow rapid genotype-by-environment assessments for climate adaptation traits.

• Talent circulation: Marie-Skłodowska-Curie mobility, Erasmus+ and EIT Food skill programmes can be plugged into the project to provide highly trained breeders, bioinformaticians and phenotyping specialists.

3. Alignment with EU Flagship Policies

• European Green Deal & Farm-to-Fork: Deliver low-input, biodiversity-friendly cultivars that directly support the 50 % pesticide-use reduction and 20 % fertiliser-loss reduction targets.

• CAP Strategic Plans: Each Member State must earmark eco-scheme budgets for agro-ecology and organic farming; the project’s roadmap gives a common science base to justify such investments.

• Biotechnology & Biomanufacturing Communication (COM(2024)137): The action will showcase safe, cutting-edge breeding technologies (NGTs, speed breeding, AI-driven genomics) and inform the upcoming EU Biotech Act.

4. Regulatory Harmonisation Benefits

• Facilitated variety testing: Mapping of infrastructure & regulatory bottlenecks will feed evidence to CPVO and DG SANTE, paving the way for harmonised protocols for organic heterogeneous materials and minor/underutilised crops.

• ABS & Nagoya compliance tools: A common framework reduces legal uncertainty around access to genetic resources, supporting Target 13 of the Kunming-Montreal GBF.

5. Access to Europe’s Innovation Ecosystem

• Research Infrastructures (AnaEE-ERIC, EMPHASIS, ELIXIR, EuroBioImaging) provide high-throughput phenotyping, controlled environment platforms and FAIR data services—resources often unaffordable for single national projects.

• Digital Europe & Agriculture of Data Partnership: The CSA can integrate geospatial, climate and soil data layers, enabling predictive breeding models and decision support tools across Member States.

• Regional Innovation Valleys & EIP-AGRI Operational Groups: Pilot outcomes can be fast-tracked to farmers via existing grassroots networks in every NUTS-2 region.

6. Funding Synergies & Leverage

• Cascade funding: The lump-sum CSA may allocate small grants (e.g. €50–100 k) to breeder SMEs and Living Labs, leveraging private co-investment.

• Complementarity with Horizon Europe Partnerships: Agroecology, Sustainable Food Systems, Animal Health & Welfare—joint calls or mirror projects increase budget leverage by up to 3×.

• Other EU instruments:

- ERDF & Just Transition Fund for upgrading regional phenotyping sites.

- CAP I3 facility for scaling innovative seed processing lines.

- InvestEU Green Transition window for commercial roll-out.

7. Scale & Impact Potential

• EU-wide impact indicators:

- +25 % increase in the annual number of climate-resilient varieties registered across the EU by 2030.

- ≥15 % reduction in average breeding cycle length through shared infrastructures.

• Market transformation: Harmonised value proposition (nutrient-use efficiency, drought tolerance, taste) can be communicated with a pan-EU quality label, fostering consumer trust and uptake.

• Global spill-over: A strong EU breeding ecosystem enhances the Union’s strategic autonomy for plant protein and creates export opportunities, reinforcing Europe’s leadership in setting global sustainability standards.

8. Strategic Value of Operating at EU Scale

1. Critical mass for minor & orphan crops that lack domestic demand but gain relevance when pooled across Member States (e.g. buckwheat, lupin, sorghum, heritage fruit trees).

2. Risk-sharing: Jointly tackling high-risk, pre-competitive genomics research lowers the individual financial burden on SMEs.

3. Policy feedback loop: Continuous dialogue with DG AGRI, DG RTD, DG SANTE and CPVO ensures that research outputs translate quickly into pragmatic policy adjustments.

4. Social licence: Multi-actor, trans-national engagement builds EU-wide societal acceptance for novel breeding technologies, mitigating polarised national debates.

9. Actionable Opportunities for Applicants

• Build a 27-MS consortium anchored by at least one funder or research ministry per macro-region (North, South, East, West) to guarantee representativeness.

• Use the CSA to establish a virtual ‘EU Breeding Helpdesk’ offering regulatory, IP and ABS advice to SMEs.

• Propose a joint strategic R&I roadmap 2027-2040 that quantifies trait priorities, technology readiness paths and investment gaps, serving as a blueprint for future Horizon clusters and CAP interventions.

• Plan demonstrator work packages with living labs in contrasting pedo-climatic zones (e.g. Atlantic, Continental, Mediterranean, Boreal) to validate participatory breeding methods.

10. Key Take-Away

Leveraging the Union’s integrated market, common regulatory space and unparalleled research infrastructure, this grant allows stakeholders to create a coherent, world-class crop-breeding ecosystem whose scale, speed and impact cannot be matched by isolated national initiatives.