A new European research project, BIOCRAFT, will combine artificial intelligence, biotechnology and crop science to develop potato and rice varieties that can stand up to drought, extreme heat, soil degradation, salinity and crop diseases. The four-year project starts in October 2026.
BIOCRAFT, short for "Crafting System Resilience, from a Holistic Biotech Approach to Smart Crops and Efficient Biomanufacturing", has received EUR 3.81 million from the European Innovation Council's EIC Pathfinder programme under Horizon Europe. It is coordinated by the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology (Fraunhofer IME) in Germany.
Over 48 months, the researchers plan to bring together advanced biotechnology, AI-driven approaches, crop monitoring technology and work on the soil microbiome, the community of microbes around plant roots. The aim is to find where crop performance can be improved, and then to develop and validate potato and rice varieties with better tolerance of environmental and biological stress, while keeping yields up and improving nutritional value.
"Climate change is creating urgent challenges for agricultural production and food security across Europe," said Prof. Stefan Schillberg, the project coordinator at Fraunhofer IME. He said the project was developing solutions to help crops withstand stress while opening opportunities for sustainable biomanufacturing.
That second strand treats crops as biological factories for high-value biomolecules. The consortium will study plant-based biomanufacturing as a possible new line for Europe's biotechnology sector, alongside food production.
The partners come from Germany, Portugal, Spain and Italy: KPMG Portugal, SGS Portugal, IRIS Technology Solutions, Agrotecnio, SA.PI.SE. Societa Agricola, ADV Arros de Pals and the Public University of Navarra, with the German seed company KWS Saat as an associated partner. The project will also examine the regulatory, environmental and social questions raised by next-generation crop technologies.
Whether the project's varieties ever reach farmers will depend on its results and on how Europe regulates them; the work was announced in a press release from KPMG and reported by Seed World Europe staff.
Photo: Norbert Schnitzler / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Source: Seed World Europe
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