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To meet the increasing global demand for food, feed, fibre and other plant‐derived products, a steep increase in crop productivity is a scientifically and technically challenging imperative. The CropBooster‐P project, a response to the H2020 call 'Future proofing our plants', is developing a roadmap for plant research to improve crops critical for the future of European agriculture by increasing crop yield, nutritional quality, value for non‐food applications and sustainability. However, if we want to efficiently improve crop production in Europe and prioritize methods for crop trait improvement in the coming years, we need to take into account future socio‐economic, technological and global developments, including numerous policy and socio‐economic challenges and constraints. Based on a wide range of possible global trends and key uncertainties, we developed four extreme future learning scenarios that depict complementary future developments. Here, we elaborate on how the scenarios could inform and direct future plant research, and we aim to highlight the crop improvement approaches that could be the most promising or appropriate within each of these four future world scenarios. Moreover, we discuss some key plant technology options that would need to be developed further to meet the needs of multiple future learning scenarios, such as improving methods for breeding and genetic engineering. In addition, other diverse platforms of food production may offer unrealized potential, such as underutilized terrestrial and aquatic species as alternative sources of nutrition and biomass production. We demonstrate that although several methods or traits could facilitate a more efficient crop production system in some of the scenarios, others may offer great potential in all four of the future learning scenarios. Altogether, this indicates that depending on which future we are heading toward, distinct plant research fields should be given priority if we are to meet our food, feed and non‐food biomass production needs in the coming decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world needs more than double its current agricultural productivity by 2050 to produce enough food and feed, as well as to provide feedstock for the bioeconomy. These future increases will not only need to be sustainable but without comprommising the nutritional quality, and ideally also need to decrease greenhouse gas emissions and increase carbon sequestration to help mitigate the consequences of global climate change. These challenges could be tackled by developing and integrating new future‐proof crops into our food system. The H2020 CropBooster‐P project sets out plant‐centered breeding approaches guided by a broad socio‐economic and societal support. First, the potential approaches for breeding crops with sustainably increased yields adapted to the future climate of Europe are identified. These crop‐breeding options are subsequently prioritized and their adoption considered by experts across the agri‐food system and the wider public, taking into account environmental, economic and other technical criteria. In this way, a specific research agenda to future‐proof our crops was developed, supported by an eventual implementation plan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global demand for providing nutritious, sustainable, and safe diets for a 10 billion population by 2050 while preserving affordability, reducing environmental impacts, and adapting to climate change will require accelerating the transition to sustainable agri‐food systems. A plausible way to help tackle these challenges is by developing new plant varieties that have improved crop yield, plant nutritional quality, and sustainability (or resilience) traits. However, stakeholders, consumers, and citizens' concerns and appreciation of future‐proofing crops and the acceptability of new plant breeding strategies are not well‐established. These groups are actors in the agri‐food systems, and their views, values, needs, and expectations are crucial in helping to co‐design fair, ethical, acceptable, sustainable, and socially desirable policies on new plant breeding techniques (NPBTs) and the transition to sustainable agri‐food systems. In this study, we engaged with consumer experts and societal stakeholders to consider their perceptions, expectations, and acceptability of improving crops and NPBTs for future‐proofing the agri‐food systems. Our analysis points to a need for governments to take a proactive role in regulating NPBTs, ensure openness and transparency in breeding new crop varieties, and inform consumers about the effects of these breeding programmes and the risks and benefits of the new crop varieties developed. Consumer experts and societal stakeholders considered these strategies necessary to instil confidence in society about NPBTs and accelerate the transition to sustainable agri‐food systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genome editing helps to develop plant varieties that address future agricultural challenges such as climate change adaptation, resource efficiency and sustainable productivity. Nevertheless, associated aspects relating, besides others, to the regulation of genome editing, intellectual property rights and potential environmental and health aspects lead to fierce discussions within the European Union. In these discussions, values and moral aspects play a decisive role. To support and set the stage for an open‐minded dialogue, the communication behaviour and needs of specific stakeholder groups has been analysed by means of two online surveys. The surveys considered sources and channels used for information sourcing and dissemination, conveyed content and relevant target audiences. In addition, the degree of trust of stakeholders in different information sources was assessed. Stakeholders included representatives from academia, civil society organisations (including environmental and consumer organisations), journalists, the farming community, the seed and plant breeding sector and policymakers across Europe. Our analysis suggests that, in general, a high level of trust is associated with representatives from academia, and that safety‐related aspects, transparency and sustainability are considered very important topics across the different stakeholder groups. In addition, social media seem to play a subordinate role for inter‐stakeholder communication but is of higher relevance for reaching out to the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crop breeding is one of the main tools which can assist in future‐proofing food systems for more sustainable outcomes. In order to ensure priorities are aligned with the needs and wants of food system actors, it is essential to engage with key stakeholders to understand preferences on plant breeding solutions. This study presents results from a series of online focus groups conducted with agricultural production related stakeholders (i.e. farmers and farmer representatives, policymakers and NGOs) regarding the potential for crop improvement to future‐proof European food systems. Stakeholders shared concern around climate change and environmental impacts (particularly drought and heat stress), and general agreement about the need to develop resilient crops which combine multiple positive attributes, while reducing trade‐offs and negative externalities. Stakeholders also prioritized plant breeding solutions for areas where they felt they had little agency, and existing alternative solutions, such as improving input use efficiency, or altering diets to be considered where these are available. This highlights the need for the crop breeding community to focus its attentions on the 'most hard to fix' issues, where in‐field measures are currently not offering viable solutions, to maximize acceptance and adoption by agricultural production stakeholders. It also highlights that consideration of trade‐offs, within plant and within a broader agri‐food context, must be integrated into crop breeding research and development, with trade‐off analysis an explicit component of breeding research. Understanding broader agri‐food system knock‐on effects of plant innovation is a non‐trivial challenge requiring interdisciplinary research and close partnerships with food system stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Commission (EC)requested the European Food and Safety Authority (EFSA) for an opinion on genetically modified organisms for agri‐food uses and developed through synthetic biology (SynBio) and their implications for risk assessment methodologies. In preparing this opinion EFSA has asked JKI to perform a horizon scan of plant SynBio developments with application in the agri‐food sector. Relevant SynBio cases were identified using a search strategy including scientific publications, expert interviews and a collation of companies. The outcome of this scan supports part of the terms of references of the EC mandate and EFSA in defining relevant case studies to consider during the drafting of the scientific opinion. This publication is linked to the following EFSA Supporting Publications article: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2903/sp.efsa.2020.EN-1664/full [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The most reliable and practicable measure in assuring coexistence in respect to pollen-mediated gene flow from genetically modified (GM) to conventional maize (Zea mays L.) is an isolation distance separating GM and non-GM fields. Therefore, we tested distances between 24 and 102 m at three sites in northern Germany using a field orientation representing a worst case scenario concerning wind direction. During the 3 yr of field trials the highest levels of gene flow occurred at the site and year with the longest flowering synchrony and the strongest wind blowing constantly from the GM to the non-GM field. It was shown that the GM content of a neighboring non-GM maize field is mainly determined by wind speed and direction as well as by non-GM maize field depth. Based on the maximum outcrossing data obtained it can be concluded that for non-GM maize fields being 200 m deep or more an isolation distance of 50 m is sufficient to keep the GM content of the total fields grain harvest below the European Union (EU) labeling threshold of 0.9%. However, non-GM grain maize fields with smaller field depth require larger isolation distances or additional coexistence measures. In most cases discarding 6 m of the GM maize facing non-GM maize field edge has proven to be such a valuable measure. In silage maize production 50 m isolation distance is adequate even for non-GM maize field depths down to 50 m. We recommend flexible separation distances in dependence on non-GM maize field depth to comply with EU coexistence requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One approach to ensuring coexistence of genetically modified (GM) and conventional maize (Zea mays L.) is reducing pollen-mediated gene flow. Field experiments were conducted in 2005 at four sites in Germany to compare a tall sunflower crop (Helianthus annuus L.) vs. a short clover-grass crop (Trifolium pratense L. and Lolium spp.) with regard to their ability to reduce outcrossing when grown as buffer between pollen donor and recipient maize plots. Three different maize test systems were used (i) quantification of a donor transgene via real- time polymerase chain reaction (rt PCR), (ii) a nontransgenic test system based on a dominant kernel color trait, and (iii) a molecular marker test system based on rt PCR quantification of a cultivar-specific nontransgenic DNA sequence. We found that the three test systems yielded comparable results concerning buffer-crop effectiveness and edge effects. There was no difference in outcrossing rates when comparing the sunflower vs. clover-grass buffer crop. Outcrossing rates downwind beyond 12 m sunflower as buffer crop within adjacent 12-m-wide recipient maize were 4.2, 11.7, and 3 8% for the GM maize, the kernel color, and the molecular marker test system compared with clover-grass with 4.3, 9.6, and 3.6%. Pronounced edge effects were detected at the edges of recipient maize fields. Based on the present study, growing sunflower as a tall crop between GM and non-GM maize cannot be recommended as an appropriate coexistence measure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]