Crops2Industry
Crops2Industry Project
Kick-off meeting
28 September 2009 Athens – Hotel Divani Pallas Acropolis
Meeting AGENDA
9:00 – 10:00 / General issues09:00 - 09:30 / Welcome / CRES, Myrsini Christou
Project outline
09:30 – 09:45 / Project overview from the EC / EC, Jens Hoegel
09:45 - 11:00 / Non-food crops (WP1)
Oil crops
Fiber crops
Carbohydrate crops
Other specialty crops / CRES, Myrsini Christou
INF, Krzysztof Heller
UNIBO, Andrea Monti
NCPRI, Gabriela Pintilie
11:00 – 11:15 / Coffee break
11:15 – 13:15 / Work Planning
11:15 – 11:45 / Plant breeding (WP2)
Seed quality (WP2) / AUA, Dimitra Milioni
BIOS - Alatsidis Hercules
11:45 – 13:15 / Bio-based products (WP3)
Oils
Fibers
Resins
Other specialty products / INF, Krzysztof Heller
ITERGE, Carine Alfos
KEFI, Marco Errani
HEMPFLAX, Mark Reinders
CHIMAR, Helectra Papadopoulou
NCPRI, Gabriela Pintilie
13:15 – 15:00 / Lunch break
15:00 – 17:00 / Work Planning
15:00 – 15:20 / Costs and socio-economics (WP4) / IC, Calliope Panoutsou
15:20 – 16:00 / Sustainability standards (WP5)
Geo-spatial bio-physical impact analysis / OECO, Uwe Fritsche
BOKU, Erwin Schmid
16:00 – 16:30 / Overall assessment (WP6) / CRES, Myrsini Christou
Dissemination (WP7)
Project management (WP8)
16:30 – 17:00 / Final conclusions/recommendations
Questions - Discussions / All
17:00 / End of meeting
Participants list
Name / Organization / e-mailMyrsini Christou / CRES /
Jens Hoegel / EC /
Efi Alexopoulou / CRES /
Andrea Monti / UNIBO /
Marco Errani / KEFI ITALIA /
Reveka Stefanidou / BIOS AGROSYSTEMS /
Dimitra Milioni / AUA.bio /
Garriela Pintilie / NCPRI /
Carine Alfos / ITERG /
Maria Talarczyk / INF & MP /
Xavier Pages / ITERG /
Calliope Panoutsou / Imperial College /
Electra Papadopoulou / CHIMAR /
Erwin Schmid / BOKU /
Herculus Alatsidis / BIOS Agrosystems /
Mark Reinders / HEMPFLAX /
Krzysztof Heller / INF & MP /
Przemyslaw Baraniecki / INF & MP /
Ioanna Papamichail / CRES /
Kostas Tsiotas / CRES /
Georgia Trikatsoula / CRES /
Minutes from Kick-off meeting page 10/15
Athens, 28/9/09
Crops2Industry
Ms Christou welcomed the partners and the Project Officer in this kick-off meeting of the project.
All participants presented themselves in the beginning of the meeting. In addition, they presented their range of activities related to their specific role in the project.
Project outline / M. ChristouMyrsini Christou (project coordinator) presented the outline of the project (work packages, timetable, and consortium). She informed the consortium that the starting date of the project is 1st of September 2009 and the project will last 30 months (1/9/09-29/02/2012).
Project overview from the EC / J. Hoegel
Jens Hoegel (EU Project Officer) briefly presented FP7, Theme2 and the 2007 topic on EU non-food crops and their industrial application, where the project was submitted, as well as some general rules regarding eligibility of funding, legal framework, Grant Agreement, costs, payments and reporting.
He pointed out that the central demand of the Topic is to bring together stakeholders along the production chain, from plant-breeding to industry and to identify
• suitable industrial crops and most appropriate cultivation regions
• most promising plant-based products derived from these crops
• enabling technologies to overcome bottlenecks in plant breeding (yield, adaptive capacity)
• processing pathway from cradle to shelf
• Quantify business potential for the crops considered
Consequently, this project is in the edge of crops and industries.
What is essential in this project is to link crops to regions with different culture techniques and identify the biomass potential in order to attract businesses.
He proposed to link this project with EPOBIO project, as they have identified certain key problems of the bio-industry.
He added that food security and competition should be tackled in this project that is expected to also support rural development.
Societal implications of biotechnology, including GM crops, should be also addressed, in order to have the public opinion and draft solutions on how to overcome the bottlenecks.
He mentioned that the total score of Crops2Industry was 13/15 in the evaluation stage, that we are a balanced and experienced consortium and pointed out that “the success of the project is of high priority for the implementation of the EU policies and for the creation of job opportunities”.
At the beginning of the project the coordinator will receive the advance payment, which is the 80% of the total budget (around 800,000 Euros), that will be transferred to the consortium with no delays. A 5% from each partner will be kept as a guarantee by the Commission and will be distributed at the end of the project. Mr. Francisco Garcia is the financial officer of the project.
A management report has to be delivered every half a year, of 10 pages more or less, containing information on the target of the project, the work scheduled and accomplished and the occurred/foreseen deviations. For any deviation, the coordinator has to be immediately informed and then inform the Commission services accordingly.
Reporting has to be prepared in months 18 and 30.
The reports should be delivered from the coordinator 60 days after the end of each reporting period, accompanied by a publishable report to assure visibility of the progress made. At the same time a FORM C should be sent (Financial Statement). EU has 105 days to evaluate and execute the corresponding payment.
Mr. Hoengel added that contact amendments could be done in two cases: a) if the project coordinator will ask for it and b) EU asks for that and then the coordinator will be asked for acceptance. The latter case is new.
Mr. Hoengel pointed out that a consortium agreement is highly recommended by the EU and should be done before the distribution of the advanced payment to the partners.
Actions decided / When
1. / To prepare the consortium agreement and distribute to the partners for signature
CRES / October 2009 (m2) and before distributing the advanced payment to the consortium)
Management report
CRES / February 2010
WP1 / Non-food crops / WP leader: CRES
Task 1.1 / Oil crops / Task leader: CRES
Myrsini Christou being the leader of WP1 made an overall presentation of the WP, the involved partners, the tasks and deliverables. According to the DoW in the Technical Annex, the non-food crops to be dealt with are the Oil crops, Fiber crops, Carbohydrate crops and Medicinal and other specialty crops. The information to be collected will refer to issues such as: plant anatomy, areas of origin, current cultivation, growing conditions, logistics, yields, quality, applications, factors restricting growth, yielding potential and research gaps.
She proposed and the partners accepted that these will be kept as chapters in the relevant Deliverables.
CRES is leading the Task 1.1 ‘Oil crops’, therefore she presented the experience of CRES on oil crops.
Under this task, CRES has to collect information for rapeseed, Ethiopian mustard and sunflower, whereas ITERG will report on oil crops for liquid biofuels, and UNIBO on the oil crops for lubricants, solvments and polymers. There was a discussion on updating the list of crops to include in the deliverables and allocate responsibilities. ITERGE offered to comment and update the list proposed in this Task.
CRES will also be responsible for collecting information on fiber crops in Task 1.2, reporting on the seed and wood fibres, as well as on carbohydrate crops in Task 1.3 reporting on sweet sorghum and Jerusalem artichoke.
She then presented Task 1.5 and Task 1.6 also leaded by CRES. Task 1.5 is directly linked with another project being coordinated by CRES (4FCROPS, scenarios for 2020 and 2030).
Finally, she presented the deliverables linked with this WP. She then spoke about the deliverables all due in month 13 and updated at the end of the project (month 30), stressing out that all partners have to respect these deadlines.
Task 1.2 / Fiber crops / Task leader: INF
Krzysztof Heller presented the INFMP institute (research fields, its organisation, laboratories, international cooperation, etc.) after the reform in the beginning of January 2009.
Being the WP leader he then presented how INF&MP is planning to organize the work. According to the DoW in the Technical Annex, INF will provide input on the bast fibres, UNIBO will report on fruit and leaf fibers, whereas CRES will report on the seed and wood fibres.
Prof Heller presented the progress of work they have already done and the level of information they have already collected on the bast fibers, which is almost the half anticipated in the project. Therefore INF is now starting to prepare the relevant Deliverable.
As in the previous Task, INFMP will send an updated list of fibre crops.
Task 1.3 / Carbohydrate crops / Task leader: UNIBO
Andrea Monti presented briefly the activities of University of Bologna, one of the oldest in Europe. UNIBO – DISTA, Department of Environmental Science and Technology is working on Task 1.1 having to report on oil crops apart from rapeseed, Ethiopian mustard, sunflower and jatropha. Possible crops to include are: flax, castor, safflower, crambe, cameline, coriander and other minor crops such as lesquerella, loosestrifes, meadowfoam, gopher plant, hedge and white mustard, tarweed, ironweed, oenotera, and lunaria. (Considerable advances on these crops were done during the IENICA project so our reports will start from these results). Consequently, the list will be updated soon as the crops and partners’ responsibilities are finalized.
In Task 1.2 they will work on fruit and leaf fibres, according to the DoW. They proposed to also include to coconut (fruit fibre) and sisal (leaf fibre).
UNIBO leads in task 1.3 and in the frame of this, they will work on maize, potatoes, cassava and sugar beet. Additional crops not listed in the DoW could be: chicory, oats, quinoa, wheat, barley, sugar cane, yam (sweet potato, batata), breadfruit. Carbohydrate crops can be used for paper; adhesive and glues,, detergents, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, paints, agrochemicals, bio-plastics, e.g. Mater-Bi of the Novamont Company. On this occasion, he proposed to invite NOVAMONT as a speaker in the workshop on the carbohydrate crops.
Andrea Monti then presented the state-of-the-art of carbohydrate crops market, where the paper and board industry accounts for 44% of EU non-food starch sector. He finally pointed out existing barriers which referred to crop production, carbohydrate extraction industry, European market price and legislation.
On this point a question raised: “Will we deal only with crops grown in EU or will we include others grown elsewhere and have the potential to be introduced in Europe?” As a general comment for all industrial crops, it was pointed out that apart from the crops grown conventionally in Europe, the lists of oil, fiber and carbohydrate crops should – and could – contain all crops that could potentially be grown in Europe. The ability of the crops to be grown in Europe will be revealed /assessed from the information on the crops’ characteristics, areas of origin and growth requirement that will be collected.
Task 1.4 / Other speciality crops / Task leader: NCPRI
Gabriela Pintilie presented NCPRI (main activities, etc.) NCPRI will lead the Task 1.4 and work on pharmaceutical crops (crops production, etc). NCPRI will start with a survey of wild and cultivated medicinal and aromatic herbs for each country from EU 27, regarding to the crops potential, quality of the vegetable plant materials as regards the bioactive principles content and European and national legislation requirements for the sustainable cropping and cultivation of medicinal and aromatic plants
Then will select 20 plants common to different countries of EU or specific to one or another country which are interesting from the industrial point of view for further investigation. The selection criteria will be the multi-purpose potential of the plant, the main and secondary stream products based on current uses and future projections, as well as the type (herb, seeds, fruits, leaves, flowers, roots) and necessary amount of vegetable material for industrial use.
The list of the select plants will be sent to the consortium for comments.
NCPRI, as well as INF&MP and UNIBO were partners in the IENICA project.
General conclusions
1. The information collected for all industrial crops will refer to the following items and they will be kept as chapters in the Deliverables 1.1 – 1.4
· Plants anatomy
· Areas of origin and current cultivation
· Growing conditions – input requirements
· Logistics (harvesting – handling) until the industrial plant gate
· Yields
· Quality
· Applications: current – potential
· Factors restricting growth and yielding potential
· Research gaps
2. For all industrial crops, apart from the crops grown conventionally in Europe, the lists of oil, fiber and carbohydrate crops should – and could – contain all crops that could potentially be grown in Europe. That will be revealed from the information collected (as mentioned above).
3. A list will be prepared by the Task Leaders and will be sent to the consortium to decide and comment. Each task leader will list the favourable crops and the relevant industries will list from their point of view the best cases. Then biotechnology will work on selected cases that rank as the best for each industrial use.
4. 4FCROPS project will provide information on the zones and a list of the crops adapted in each zone. The list refers to non-food crops but they will be updated with other categories of crops, i.e the oil and carbohydrate crops.
5. The workshop in POZNAN is a good chance for WP leaders of WP1 and WP3 to meet and discuss on the final selection of crops and partners’ responsibilities.
Actions decided – Partners responsible / When
Task 1.1 / List of oil crops to be commented
CRES to INF&MP, UNIBO, ITERGE, BIOS / In the workshop in Poznan
Partners’ response / End November
Final decision and allocation of responsibilities to partners
CRES / December
Task 1.2 / List of fiber crops to be commented
INF&MP to CRES, UNIBO, ITERGE, BIOS / In the workshop in Poznan
Partners’ response / End November
Final decision and allocation of responsibilities to partners
INF&MP / December
Task 1.3 / List of carbohydrate crops to be commented
UNIBO to CRES, HEMPFLAX, BIOS / In the workshop in Poznan