Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries

A microbiological detection device will help speed up the measurement of contamination in raw meat, thus minimising costs and food waste.

Scientists have found that man-made structures in the North Sea could play a crucial role in holding coral populations together and increasing their resilience.

Lower costs, less wastage and higher-quality milk on the horizon for dairy farmers, thanks to a new optical sensor that scans for contaminants and proteins in 5 minutes.

A new interactive online platform helps to increase awareness of innovations in the bioeconomy sector.

An EU initiative incorporates climate science, hydrology and economics data to help decision-makers boost resilience and adaptation capacity.

Consumers want high-quality, organic berry products available in larger quantities. An international team of researchers has set out to meet their demands.

An agricultural robot harvesting sweet peppers will help automate labour in greenhouses.

The potential benefits of less cultivated varieties of cereals are garnering more interest in a drive towards healthy nutrition.

New research shows that a high-fat Mediterranean diet with nuts and extra virgin olive oil could modify the function of specific cell genes. This should help in the fight against several conditions, especially cardiovascular disease.

Agriculture – both victim and cause of climate change. New research shows moving away from animal protein towards legumes makes sense nutritionally and environmentally.

Food sharing as a means to both reduce waste and boost urban sustainability is clearly a good idea. But what works where and how can it be made more effective? Just some questions one project is answering.

With EU nations throwing away 88 million tonnes of food a year, a group of experts from 13 countries have launched a platform to share knowledge with consumers, producers and retailers in the hope of bringing that figure down.

With food security issues becoming ever more pressing, much research is being done to strike the right balance between high yields and low environmental impact. A major EU-funded project has run a successful pilot bringing together data from sensors and satellites to boost yields while accurately identifying levels of fertilisers needed.

Just like great wine needs time, great grapes require continuous attention and reliable assessment tools. Noting the absence of a convincing alternative to manual sampling and analysis, an EU-funded consortium has developed VineRobot, an ‘Unmanned ground vehicle’ (UGV) equipped with non-invasive sensor technology.

The WINESENSE project has successfully developed a novel extraction process for grape marc, resulting in higher polyphenol content. The consortium is already working on products for the cosmetics industry.

Part-supported through the EU-funded NUDGE-IT project, researchers have undertaken a detailed study which shows how obese people are able to crucially discount future meal times.

Against a backdrop of increasing concern about both obesity and depressive illness amongst European populations, an EU-funded study contributes pioneering research about the link between high-sugar intake and mood disorders.

Climate change is increasing water scarcity around the world and the inter-dependencies of global trade mean that the impact could ripple far and wide, including across Europe, as the EU-funded project IMPREX warns.

How best to defend the rights of small-scale fishermen, ensure they receive fair pay and boost their competitiveness? The EU-funded SUCCESS project thinks one key step is to raise awareness and they are proposing to do so by labelling.

Anyone doing their best to get their children to choose a banana over biscuits might want to read on. Research supported by EU funding has fed into the development of a computer game that could help children to go for healthy snacks over chocolate and sweets.

The EU-funded MYCOKEY project reports early success in the hunt for a faster, reliable and more environmentally friendly way to detect food contamination.

Identifying the environmental factors driving larval settlement is crucial to understanding the population dynamics of marine invertebrates. EU-funded research feeds into a new study that takes three environmental factors into consideration in an attempt to predict larval presence and intensity.

Will we have enough fertile land to grow the food our increasing population needs? Is it possible to adapt food production to climate change? How do we define responsible research and innovation in relation to food security? An EU-funded project, which aims to encourage people to debate the issues and articulate their views, has just published a toolkit settig out the steps to maximise grass-roots engagement.

The EU-funded XF-ACTORS project recently reported on its disease modelling work, key to its integrated management strategy to control the spread of the Xylella fastidi-osa (XF) pathogen, which is putting olive groves at serious risk in Southern Italy.

Commission Regulation (EU) 432/2012 lists a series of requirements for producers to legally advertise the health benefits of polyphenols in their olive oil. Thanks to the OLEUM project, an easy method can now be applied to certify compliance with this regulation.