CropBooster-P · Preparatory action to Boost Global Crop Yield for Food & Nutrition Security and fueling a Bioeconomy

Increasing global crop productivity will be central in meeting some of the greatest challenges facing mankind: How will we sustainably feed 9.7 billion people by 2050, while also achieving the transition from a fossil economy towards a bio-economy in order to mitigate, or possibly reverse, the effects of global climate change? How can we assure and maintain the nutritional quality of our future crops? Additionally, how can we provide new crop cultivars adapted to the constraints imposed across vast areas by climate change? A doubling of global crop productivity is required to produce enough plant biomass to achieve food and nutrition security, as well as to meet the demands of a future bioeconomy. To ensure both Food and Nutrition Security this increase in crop production must be achieved without any loss of nutritional quality. In addition, future agriculture will require crops that combine sustainability - they must efficiently using scarce resources like minerals and water and preserving Earth’s biodiversity - with a high resilience to adverse climate conditions. In order to meet these challenging demands, our current crop plants will have to be re-designed and a “future proof” profiling is urgently needed. With a multitude of possible crops and genetic changes, combined with multiple environmental changes, policy and societal challenges, progress could be mired in a seemingly insurmountable complexity. CropBooster-P will address this by identifying priorities and opportunities to adapting and boosting productivity to the environmental and societal changes. While engaging with the public from the beginning, and by mobilizing European plant sciences, our objective is to produce a White Paper – a Roadmap – that will describe the pathway to sustainably doubling Europe’s crop yields by 2050 and preparing these crops for the needs and the future climate of Europe