34 I EUROPEAN SEED I EUROPEAN-SEED.COM PROJECT PARTNERS The CropBooster-P project is led by Wageningen University & Research and carried out by a consortium of 18 partners and associated partners, in cooperation with a Stakeholder Group that will repre- sent academia, industry, consumers, NGO’s and policy makers. The pro- ject partners are: Stichting Wageningen Research, VIB, Wageningen University, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Europese Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Plantenonderzoek E.P.S.O., Heinrich- Heine-Universiät Duesseldorf, The University of Nottingham, Julius Kühn-Institut Bundesforschungsinstitut für Kulturpflanzen, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, University of Copenhagen, Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique INRA, European Technology Platform "Plants for the Future", Lancaster University, University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine Cluj-Napoca, European Seed Association, Association de Coordination Technique Agricole ACTA, Arvalis and Sorbonne University. Commission now asks for scenarios to develop the future crop plants that will be central in meeting these challenges regard- ing food security and climate change. But there is more to it: it is not only about developing scenarios to design our future crops, the Commission also wants to know what the economic, environmental and social effects of using these crops in future agriculture will be. And last but not least, the Commission also wants to know how the European plant science community can be organized to carry out the required scientific research and, most importantly, how this can be done while getting the support of society so that in the end the implementation of this research will be accepted by society. So, all the above is what our project will tackle. CropBooster-P is a so-called “Coordination and Support Action” which means that is not a research project but a supporting project in which we will develop a roadmap for the European Commission highlighting different scenarios the Commission can use for policy making and for developing future research directions. ES: HOW WILL THE WORK BE ORGANIZED IN THE PROJECT? RKL: CropBooster-P is organized into six work packages and basically, all partners are involved in most of them. In addition, every work package also will involve members of our Stakeholder Group. Work package 1 will assess through literature research and data-mining the current scientific and technical options available to improve crop plants without losing crop quality. In a workshop, together with our stakeholders we will develop future scenario’s how the different options to improve crop plants would work out when extrapolating the current state-of-the-art. In work package 2 an analysis will be made of the effects that the scenario’s that are developed in work package 1 will have on society trough organizing a number of different Expert Workshops to assess the economic, social en envi- ronmental effects that the implementation of different options to improve crops will cause. Work package 3 has the important task to involve consum- ers, citizens and NGO’s in the development of the Roadmap that CropBooster-P ultimately will deliver. Following a Responsible Research and Innovation strategy, we thrive to involve non-ex- pert stakeholders by organizing regional workshops with farm- ers and consumers throughout Europe, In work package 4 we will bring together networks and com- munity of researchers to build a consensus among requirements of sustainable strategies to improve crop yield and nutritional quality at European scale. This will result in drafting joint white papers. Finally, work package 5 will bring it all together resulting in the Roadmap for the European Commission. This Roadmap will present the different scenarios that have been developed to future proof our crop plants, tested by expert panels and scru- tinized by stakeholders from society. In addition, the Roadmap will include a fully worked out plan as how a large European research program could be developed and run to carry out the research proposed in the Roadmap. The sixth work package will take care of project manage- ment and communication. ES: HOW WILL THE EUROPEAN CONSUMERS BENEFIT FROM THIS PROJECT? RKL: This is of course a rather difficult question to answer as the main deliverable of CropBooster-P will be a roadmap to The CropBooster-P team at their kick off meeting on 20 November. We really need the most effective plant breeding tools available to ensure that improved crops are broadly available to farmers by 2050.