The European project GEN4OLIVE has launched its first call for proposals aimed at SMEs. It will fund activities for the olive pre-breeding and the development of new technologies that accelerate and make the breeding process more effective.

The University of Córdoba coordinates this project in which the universities of Jaén and Granada, the Technological Corporation of Andalusia (CTA) and the companies Galpagro, Cámbrico Biotech and Santa Cruz Ingeniería also participate.

The companies can request up to €50.000 in financing for individual projects or up to €100.000 for collaborative projects. The application can be made through the GEN4OLIVE project website and is open until December 1st, 2021.

The call is aimed at SMEs established in one of the following countries: France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Morocco, Spain and Turkey, interested in olive breeding activities, and end-users of the material available at Germplasm Banks (i.e., breeders, olive farmers and olive oil or table olives producers).

Also, technology-oriented SMEs that may contribute to hasten and upgrade the olive genetic resources can participate in this call for proposals.

It is expected that selected projects enhance multi-actor collaboration and knowledge transfer between the Germplasm Banks and the industrial fabric.

If you are thinking about participating in this 1st Call for Proposals and need further information about it, you can attend the following online infodays:

• September 15th, 2021: International Infoday (language: English). Registration form available here.
• September 28th, 2021: National Infoday (language: Spanish). Online registration coming soon.

In addition, on 15th September GEN4OLIVE will open a call for independent experts with experience in planning, exploitation and commercialization strategies of international R&D projects, to evaluate the proposals received in this call.

The experts must be experienced evaluators with 5 years of expertise in one of the following fields:

• Varietal development processes using pre-breeding technologies or methodologies.
• IT tools that can support plant pre- breeding activities based on technologies.
• Technology innovation projects led by SMEs to increase their competitiveness.

The guidelines to know the requirements will be available on GEN4OLIVE website soon and the call will be open until November 15th, 2021.

The European project GEN4OLIVE is an Innovation Action funded by the Horizon 2020 Programme of the European Union (EU) to accelerate the use of olive genetic resources with the aim of solving the problems faced by the sector.