Location: Horticultural Crops Research Unit
Project Number: 2072-21220-003-012-N
Project Type: Non-Funded Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Mar 1, 2016
End Date: Feb 29, 2020
Objective:
Identification of elite cultivated berry germplasm (covering a century of breeding history in EU), which exhibit advancements in the balance between fruit yield and nutritional quality under adverse environmental growth conditions and different geographical locations.
Approach:
GoodBerry brings together internationally renowned academic groups with a large experience in plant breeding, plant genomics, and plant metabolite profiling, with small and medium size technological companies active in the berry-breeding sector. GoodBerry is a multifactor approach that will improve competitiveness of the European berry production by providing the necessary knowledge and procedures to facilitate development of well-accepted and desirable berry fruits with improved yield and high quality, even under multiple nonoptimal growth conditions. GoodBerry applies a multi-tiered strategy that interlinks research areas from molecular to cultivation levels using strawberry, raspberry, and blackcurrant as model crop species. The project will apply the most recent technical advances offered by cutting edge –omic technologies. The expert application of data mining and integration of derived massive-data sets will allow identification of new factors and mechanism to meet our targets. Additionally, during the project, all data will be made available and through the generation of an open-access database, which will be also used for the dissemination of the results with the support of the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) of the sector. The reliability of the results will be scrutinized by the consortium. The consortium will include major EU institutions and two international institutions that manage berry research as well as key berry-breeding companies, which drive berry production and markets in the EU thus interconnecting complementary knowledge and high cross-resources platforms. GoodBerry will thus extract and assemble the knowledge and skills necessary to seed a technology base for Europe and other berry producing regions that will secure and expand high quality production chains. Consequently, GoodBerrys outcomes will positively impact a significant number of key strategic areas including sustainable production by unlocking genetic variety and by identifying optimal management strategies, important socio-economic factors, the knowledge-based economy, competitiveness and prosperity, international development, the advancement of fundamental science, and the exploitation of knowledge.
