First time coordination success!
When Agri-food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI) and University College Dublin (UCD) collaborated to develop a consortium addressing innovations in plant variety testing, support from Intertrade Ireland proved to be a crucial factor in their success.
UCD and AFBI had worked together previously and had strong ideas they wished to see implemented. AFBI Plant Testing Station had the right profile to coordinate a project for the specific topic of interest, but lacked experience of EU applications. At a crucial time in proposal development AFBI and UCD attended a 2 day cross-border intensive training workshop on proposal writing, organised by Intertrade Ireland. This enabled the partnership to write and submit a high-quality proposal which was successful in winning funding.
InnoVar is a large (€8M) 4.5 year project, coordinated by AFBI, with 21 partners in 10 countries. It will update Europe’s methodologies for the testing of new plant species, building in machine learning and additional digital capabilities. It will help identify plants with more desirable characteristics, able to survive more extreme weather, and aid farmers in their selection of such varieties.
Project factsheet (EU results on CORDIS)
Support available from Intertrade Ireland.