INCREASE intends to systematically address current shortcomings: Focusing on chickpea, common bean, lentil and lupin, the project will implement a new approach to conserve, manage and characterise genetic resources leading to benefits on different levels. It promises to attract additional private and public investment to boost food legumes breeding. Furthermore, the availability and access to well-described and well-managed collections of genetic resources capturing the full range of species is of crucial importance for reaching a competitive level regarding agronomic performance and sustainability in the EU.

INCREASE will combine cutting-edge approaches in plant genetics and genomics, high throughput phenotyping, including molecular phenotyping (e.g. transcriptomics and metabolomics), with most recent advances in information technology and artificial intelligence to boost the conservation of European crop genetic resources and promote their use and valorisation.