ExpectedOutcome:
Activities under this topic will help to progress towards the objectives of the Mission ‘A Soil Deal for Europe’, in particular its operational objective 2, “Co-create and upscale place-based innovations to improve soil health in all places”.
Project results should contribute to all of the following outcomes:
Onsite digital technologies and applications are emerging in food production and have the potential to detect chemical and biological stressors in soil and plants to help assessing, managing and eventually eliminating potential food safety risks that these stressors may pose. There is a need to improve the development and application of digital tools in primary production and food industries and boost their technological scale-up as a means to address more effectively the soil-food nexus. Moreover, those technologies will help the food industry to track safety and quality of post-harvested food grown in soils.
Proposed activities should:
Proposals should also include a dedicated task, appropriate resources and a plan on how they will collaborate with other projects funded under this topic, and ensure as well synergies with projects funded under topics HORIZON-MISS-2021-SOIL-02-03: “Linking soil health to nutritional and safe food”, and HORIZON-CL6-2023-GOVERNANCE: “Digital technologies supporting plant health early detection, territory surveillance and phytosanitary measures”.
Proposals should demonstrate a route towards open access, longevity, sustainability and interoperability of knowledge and outputs through close collaboration with the Joint Research Centre’s EU Soil Observatory (EUSO).
Potentially, the projects funded under this topic could cooperate with living labs and lighthouses that will be created in this call and future calls under the Mission.
In this topic, the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.
Specific Topic Conditions:Activities are expected to achieve TRL 7-8 by the end of the project – see General Annex B.