Research program: GREEN ERA-Hub – 2nd Joint International Funding Ca
CUP: J53C24003770007
Coordinator: Council for Agricultural Research and Economics (CREA) – Research Centre for Genomics and Bioin-formatics
Research areas: Chimica agraria, pedologia e genetica agraria; Patologia vegetale ed entomologia; Microbiologia agroambientale e degli alimenti.
Scientific Officer: Marco Maccaferri
Duration: 01/07/2025 - 30/06/2028
Amount financed: 1.793.000 €
Research group: Antonio Prodi, Loredana Baffoni.
The ambition of CerealBio is to enhance the resilience and productivity under reduced chemical inputs and changing climatic conditions of the major EU cereal bread wheat and the regionally important cereals durum wheat and oats. The CerealBio evidence-based hypothesis is that crop resilience and sustainability can be achieved by breeding for traits that allow plants to positively synergize within the field environment/ecosystem, which includes soil resources, the above and below-ground microbiota, and the community of other crop plants. The feasibility of this goal is en-sured by the wide genetic biodiversity for plant traits involved in the plant/ecosystem cross-talk and their importance as determinants of the effective integration of crop plants within their environment.