GSS EU Science Funding Gateway

Activities should address:

• Technical improvements of the bioprospecting of any land-based organisms for potential bioactive compounds and functional materials, based on identified suitable sources of feedstock. The bioprospecting may be “bio-guided” by the study of chemical ecology interspecific interactions (symbiotic/defence) such as, for instance, plant-insects, or microbial-insect/plant/fungus interactions.
• Addressing sustainable biodiscovery, including by advanced detection methods, such as in silico database analysis, microfluidics/lab-on-chip, high-throughput screening, machine learning, etc, overcoming the issues of low concentrations of target molecules, and their general scarcity, and use of natural biological resources from diverse terrestrial environments and ecosystems, allowing better assessment of the selected bioactivity/functional property potential.
• Defining and assessing the optimal further production routes via innovative approaches and systems/platforms (e.g., biotechnology, hydroponics, bioreactors), as well as economic feasibility assessment of these options for resulting bioactive compounds and functional materials, ensuring full valorisation of biomass and all by-products in the production routes, and biomass’ sustainable supply, and, if appropriate, proposing an outline of continuation of the end-product development beyond the project timeline and its present resources.
• Assessing and clearly communicating, by inclusive communication and dissemination strategies, the environmental and climate benefits (e.g., by lowering the pressure on the natural habitats (decrease of harvesting in situ), supporting nature conservation, and increase overall resource efficiency and sustainability), while expanding the range of natural ingredients for the new applications in industrial sectors.
• Covering the environmental, climate and safety/health impacts of the developed ingredients or processes, using Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodologies based on available standards, certification, and accepted and validated approaches. Estimate of possible negative environmental impacts and trade-offs should be provided. The need to guarantee biodiversity preservation and compliance with relevant international rules on access to biological resources, their sustainable use and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits from their utilisation, with the national regulations in the source countries and with the Convention on Biological Diversity and its Nagoya Protocol.