PHENET - 1st Policy Brief

PHENET, a 5-year Horizon Europe project, is designed to be a key driver for the agroecological transition in support of food security, climate change resilience, biodiversity, and soil carbon stock restoration in Europe. Four world-class research infrastructures (RIs), AnaEE, eLTER, ELIXIR, and EMPHASIS, join their forces to co-develop, with a diversity of innovative European companies, new tools and methods around agroecosystem phenotyping and envirotyping – meant to enrich the service portfolios of the RIs well beyond the project. Their new service portfolios will support the identification of future-proof combinations of plant species, genotypes, and agroecological management practices to meet the challenges of climate change and agroecological transition across Europe. These next-generation technologies include autonomous, low-cost, and low-energy sensors leading to new earth observation services to capture plant, soil, agricultural, and ecosystem data in thousands of locations simultaneously, supported by innovative Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet-of-Things (IoT) approaches to organise and make the best use of the resulting massive data. 

As PHENET will conclude in 2027, the intention is that the outcomes will have an enduring impact on science and economy around plant phenotyping, earth observation of agroecosystems, climate change resistance and mitigation, and agroecology transition. The technologies pioneered by PHENET will be integrated into the sustained service portfolios of AnaEE, ELIXIR, eLTER, and EMPHASIS, with the anticipation of substantial benefits for researchers and industry-leading towards increased competitiveness of Europe and climate-adapted food security.