The BIOCRAFT project — Crafting System Resilience – from a Holistic Biotech Approach to Smart Crops and Efficient Biomanufacturing — is embarking on a four-year journey aimed at strengthening the sustainability, resilience, and competitiveness of the European agri-food sector. Facing the increasing frequency of droughts, heatwaves, soil degradation, salinity, and crop diseases, the project will combine biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and crop science to help plants better withstand environmental and biological pressures.
Coordinated by the Fraunhofer IME institute (Germany), the multidisciplinary consortium includes Agrotecnio (Spain), KPMG Portugal, SGS Portugal, IRIS Technology Solutions (Spain), SA.PI.SE. Società Agricola (Italy), ADV Arròs de Pals (Spain), and the Public University of Navarre (Spain). KWS Saat SE & Co. KGaA (Germany) participates as an associated partner.
Over four years, the consortium will develop and validate a new generation of potato and rice crops with enhanced resilience, productivity, and nutritional value. BIOCRAFT will integrate advanced biotechnology, artificial intelligence, crop monitoring technologies, and soil microbiome research. Plant-based bio-manufacturing approaches will also be explored to produce high-value molecules like IGF1 and FGF2, with applications in cultivated meat and regenerative medicine.
Agrotecnio will contribute its expertise in plant genomic editing of rice, stress physiology, and nutritional trait improvement. Researchers Paul Christou and Teresa Capell from Agrotecnio-University of Lleida emphasize that the project will help position Catalonia and Spain at the forefront of sustainable agricultural innovation.
This project has received funding of €3.81 million from the European Union's research and innovation program Horizon Europe.
