INCREASE – Intelligent Collections of Food Legumes Genetic Resources for European Agrofood Systems

First INCREASE Stakeholder Consortium webinar turned out a great success!

On 27th of November 2020 we held our first Stakeholder Consortium webinar. More than 100 peoplefrom many different backgrounds participated in the meeting: scientists, farmers, plant breeders, seed suppliers, members of NGOs, teachers, students and many more.

The meeting started with an introduction of the project by Roberto Papa, the INCREASE project coordinator, followed by a quick presentation of the INCREASE App by Emanuele Frontoni (both Università Politecnica delle Marche). Léna Prochnow (EURICE) presented the Stakeholder Consortium Agreement and explained the steps towards officially becoming an INCREASE stakeholder. Her presentation was followed by an overview of the Stakeholder Consortium members held by Frédéric Muel (Terres Inovia), manager of the Stakeholder Consortium. By the time of the meeting, already 210 participants had registered for the Stakeholder Consortium, representing many different countries from Europe the rest of the world as well as many different domains of activity (see graphic).

The meeting continued with the four INCREASE Crop leaders, Elisa Bellucci (Università Politecnica delle Marche) for common bean, Tania Gioia (Università degli Studi della Basilicata) for lentil, Luis Guasch (INIA- National Institute for Agricultural and Food Research and Technology) for chickpea and Karolina Susek (Institute of Plant Genetics, Polish Academy of Sciences) for lupin, who gave short presentations on their respective crops and their involvement in the project.

The last part of the meeting was focussed on the stakeholder involvement in INCREASE, starting with Frédéric Muel (Terres Inovia) presenting proposals of possible activities. Then, the stage was given to the stakeholders. We were happy to experience that such a broad range of interesting people expressed their interest in the project and let us know about their background and their motivation. After a great and lively discussion, the meeting was closed by the latest INCREASE project clip “Come with us!”.

The meeting was a great success! A big thank you goes out to all those who were able to join and will continue to shape the success of INCREASE!