News
07/23/2020

Preliminary announcement: call for projects Ecophyto-Maturation (edition 2021) – Operational levers for a transition towards systems change in agriculture

The second edition of the call for projects « Ecophyto-Maturation » encourages projects that transfer research results to the socio-economic world. The aim is to reduce the use of phytopharmaceutical products and their impacts. The call will open on mid-September 2020 and will close on mid-February 2021.

Objectives of the call

To achieve the objectives of the Plan Ecophyto II+, using the results of the research as support, the Ministries of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, of Agriculture and Food, of Ecological Transition, of Solidarities and Health, launch a second edition of the call for projects Ecophyto-Maturation.

To meet the objectives of reducing the phytopharmaceutics use in agriculture, the agricultural sector has identified several barriers that still need the development of operational, innovative and sustainable solutions. In this framework, the ANR will launch the Ecophyto-Maturation call second edition on the end of 2020 with a provisional budget of 3.5 millions Euros (this call is cofounded with OFB in the framework of Ecophyto plan).

The goal of this call for research projects is to promote, through financial support, the valorization of scientific work successfully completed in a previous research program. The purpose is to develop products, technologies or services that will contribute to a technological breakthrough. More specifically, the aim is to encourage consortia to bring together researchers and socio-economic actors (private companies, technical centers and institutes, professional organizations, associations etc.) to develop research projects aiming at  achieving a technology readiness level (TRL) greater than or equal to 5 and proposing a solution with proven operability in response to end-users' needs.

Topics of the call

The projects should concern operational levers for a transition toward a change of systems in agriculture and aim a reduction of at least 50% of phytopharmaceutics use and/or a decrease of associated risks and impacts and/or the development of solutions for rare and dead end situations of crop protection. This second edition will cover all the themes applicable to the objectives considering solutions for:

  • Designing more resilient systems to the bio-aggressors to prevent the use of phytopharmaceutics (for example agro-equipments allowing crops diversification, variety selection, crops associations, rotations and crop management, integration of animal farming, organisational innovations or standards to favour this transition, etc.)
  • Developing alternatives for the bio-aggressors management (for example physical obstacles, biocontrol, decision support tools, organisational innovations, etc.)
  • Assessing and supporting the reduction of impacts of these products (for example reconstruction of exposure, confined spraying and no-contact manipulation, traceability, remediation solutions, etc.)

A particular attention will be brought to projects favouring the emergence of solutions with no phytophamaceutics use to answer orphan situations or technical and economical dead ends for crops protection.

Projects have to highlight the sustainability gain brought by the solution (taking into account the environmental, economic, health and social impacts) as well as the proving its operationality. The consortium will have to pay particular attention to the systemic dimension of the solution and integrate all the operational chain of actors for its implementation (farmers, firms, extension services, consumers, etc.). Projects may also include an approach for the reduction of phytopharmaceutics use in agriculture that includes upstream and downstream sectors, associating technological innovation and practices change.

The consortia will have to include at least one research organism and at least one socio-economic partner (private companies, technical centers and institutes, agriculture chambers, etc.).

Timetable

  • Call opening : mid-September 2020
  • Call closure : mid-February 2021

ANR will organise a webinar on early October 2020 to present the call and exchange with potential applicants. The date, program and registration link will be indicated at the bottom of this page next weeks.

Useful information

Scientific manager
Florence HELFT
Tél : 01 73 54 82 47
Florence.HELFT(at)agencerecherche.fr

Program supervisor
Florence JACQUET
Tél : 01 78 09 80 08
florence.jacquet(at)agencerecherche.fr

Web page dedicated to the funded projects of the first edition on the EcophytoPic website


Last updated on 12 August 2020
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