Protect and Promote Crop Wild Relatives

The overall goal of Pro-Wild is to contribute to the development of sustainable European agriculture. The focus is on preserving biodiversity while ensuring food security. This is to be achieved through the conservation, characterisation and valorisation in breeding programmes of Crop Wild Relatives (CWR) for three important European crops grown in the most diverse cultivation systems and pedoclimatic regions of Europe. Pro-Wild has set itself the following four goals:

• O1: Identification of priorities for the in situ conservation of the CWR gene pools of wheat, oilseed rape and sugar beet.
• O2: Recording and supplementing the CWR present in gene banks (ex situ) and checking their conservation status
• O3: Increasing crop diversity through CWR gene pools
• O4: Raising awareness among stakeholders of the value of CWR

Pro-Wild brings together 19 partners from 11 countries who combine expertise in various fields. The project is co-funded by the European Union, the UK Department for Research and Innovation and the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation.

• State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation SERI
• European Commission

• State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI)
• European Commission, Horizon Europe

• Institut national de recherche pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement (INRAE), France
• L'Institut agro Montpellier (IAM), France
• Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
• Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK), Germany
• University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU), Austria
• The Agricultural Research Organisation of Israel – The Volcani Centre (ARO), Israel
• Consiglio per la ricerca in agricoltura e l'analisi dell'economia agraria (CREA), Italy
• Università degli Studi di Perugia (UNIPG), Italy
• Università degli Studi di Palermo (UNIPA), Italy
• Çukurova Üniversitesi (CUK), Turkey
• Innolea, France
• KWS SAAT SE & Co. KGaA, Germany
• INRAE Transfert SAS (IT), France
• Hellenic Agricultural Organization – Dimitra (ELGO), Greece
• Institute for Sugar Beet Research (IfZ), Germany
• Highclere Consulting (HCC), Romania
• SESVanderHave, Belgium
• Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL), Switzerland
• John Innes Centre (JIC), United Kingdom

• Willer Helga (Department of Extension, Training & Communication)

• Gallmann Nina (Department of Extension, Training & Communication)
• Home Robert (Department of Food System Sciences)
• Kanner Elsa (Department of Extension, Training & Communication)

FiBL manages and coordinates the communication, dissemination and exloitation of the project's activities, progress and results (project partner)

• cordis.europa.eu: Project on the CORDIS website

• Project communication (Department of Extension, Training & Communication, FiBL Switzerland)
• Society & Innovation (Department of Food System Sciences, FiBL Switzerland)