NutriTech will build on the foundations of traditional human nutrition research using cutting-edge analytical technologies and methods to comprehensively evaluate the diet-health relationship and critically assess their usefulness for the future of nutrition research and human well-being. Technologies include genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, laser scanning cytometry, NMR based lipoprotein profiling and advanced imaging by MRI/MRS.
The overall goal of EURoot is to help farmers to face both climate change, which is expected to result in increasingly uneven rainfall, and meet the societal demand for sustainable agriculture with reduced use of water and fertilizers. EURoot objective is to enhance the cereal plant capability to acquire water and nutrients through their roots and maintain growth and performance under stress conditions. Making use of join phenotyping and modelling platforms, EURoot will conduct a suite of experiments designed to better understand and model: i.
Animal welfare is one of the topics that has consistently ranked on the top of items brought to the attention of governmental organizations and politicians across European countries. Concerns about animal welfare among European citizens are founded in well thought expectations from governments, industry and other stakeholders. The tremendous public scrutiny on animal welfare related issues put excessive pressure on lawmakers who are expected to offer rapid and effective solutions to perceived animal welfare problems.
The present proposal sees the development of business and value creation models as central to the development of personalised nutrition and thus it is intended to engage in a series of interviews with key stakeholders, which will generate a number of scenarios to be sidered by these stakeholders. Parallel to that we will run some focus groups with sumers and develop a tool to ascertain sumer attitudes to personalised nutrition in 8 EU countries (1,000 per country) representing a breadth of gastronomic traditions.
The aim of the AMYLOMICS project is to develop novel, robust enzymes for the starch and carbohydrate industries. The novel enzymes should enable the formation of new primary products, such as oligosaccharides of defined sizes, composition and degree of branching, new types of linkages, cyclic or more complex polysaccharides and an increased digestive resistance, as well as secondary sugar derivatives such as substituted starches, rare sugars or novel isomers.
There is a strong need for new thermostable hydrolases with appropriate performance and/or novel functionalities that could provide huge savings in time, money and energy for industrial processes. The HotZyme project aims to identify such enzymes from hot terrestial environments, using metagenomic screening methods. New bioinfomatic tools will be developed to facilitate function prediction of genes from metagenomes that show low or no sequence homology to enzymes of known function. A range of high-throughput screening technologies will be employed to identify novel hydrolases.
This “European surveillance network for influenza in pigs (ESNIP) 3” will maintain and expand surveillance networks established during previous EC concerted actions (ESNIP 1, QLK2-CT-2000-01636; ESNIP 2, SSPE-022749). Three work packages (WP 2, 3, 4) aim to increase the knowledge of the epidemiology and evolution of swine influenza (SI) virus (SIV) in European pigs through organised field surveillance programmes (WP2). Virus strains detected in these programmes will be subjected to detailed characterisation both antigenically (WP3) and genetically (WP4) using standardised methodology.
FLUPIG aims at a better understanding of the role of pigs in influenza pandemics. Pandemic influenza viruses come from wild birds, but they must adapt to efficient replication and transmission in humans to cause a pandemic. Pigs are considered important intermediate hosts in which avian viruses adapt to mammals before they transmit to humans.
DROPS will develop novel methods and strategies aimed at yield maintenance under fluctuating water deficit and at enhanced plant water-use efficiency. We deal with high genotype x environment interaction in the field (any trait can have positive, negative or no effect depending on drought scenarios) with an approach combining Physiology, Genetics, field testing and Ecophysiological modelling. The project targets four traits : seed abortion, vegetative growth maintenance, root system architecture and transpiration efficiency.
BIOMONAR develops multiplexed nano-array biosensors for environmental targets, i.e. pollutants and pathogens.
