The Project
Environment and Resources; Food and Nutrition; Biobased and Biomedical Products.
The need for traceability throughout the entire chain and the meticulous control of the first step in the production chain, selecting and controlling the best crops, is a decisive approach to assure that premium food arrives to the consumer and to avoid high food losses.
To meet this challenge, a steep evolution has occurred regarding the application of monitoring technologies, ranging from those applicable to non-invasive phenotyping in the field, to using sensors to understand, predict and prevent pre- and post-harvest losses.
STARGATE will enable CBQF-UCP to become an established centre of excellence on the use of sensors, multi-omics and plant phenotyping technologies as tools to gain a deeper understanding on the management of desired traits that enable sustainable and resilient agri-food systems. For this, it is essential that CBQF-UCP increases its competencies in data management and data analysis.
Sensing technologies, multi-omics, phenotyping, data analysis, predictive modelling.
Nutritious, healthy, safe and sustainable
The project will establish a framework upon which the Consortium will build to understand the potential impact of genetic resources and biodiversity on the final food, and to modulate plant phenotypes aiming to select the best raw material to generate the Premium food product (nutritious, healthy, safe and sustainable) by increasing resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses, reduce the use of fertilizers/herbicides, improve nutritional value of crops and overall quality, extend shelf-life and reduce losses.
STARGATE will facilitate structural changes at CBQF-UCP and maximize its high potential for research excellence by creating a synergic research environment with internationally leading institution in this area: INRAE, IPK and WR. These partners cover gap areas of CBQF-UCP (sensing technologies, multi-omics, phenotyping, data analysis, predictive modelling). These centres have the infrastructure as well as the capacity to manage and analyse data generated by phenomics, metabolomics, diverse sensor data, and build predictive models for selected scenarios, being ideal to support CBQF-UCP in acquiring such knowledge at international excellence levels. In the long term, STARGATE will enable CBQF-UCP to expand these tools to other stages of the agri-food system and to develop a centre of excellence in high-performance agri-food systems.