GSS EU Science Funding Gateway

Proposed activities will:

• Further develop and strengthen legitimacy and robustness of the nexus food quality-soil through an engaged, broad and effective European interdisciplinary community of scientists (including medical researchers), innovators and practitioners, while recognising regional and national specificities, contexts and needs.
• Catalyse interdisciplinary collaboration as a holistic perspective, which is necessary to address the issues related to the topic.
• Seek and integrate qualitative and quantitative scientific evidence through in situ and lab experimentation and testing, literature review, surveys, analytical modelling (etc.) to support farming practices that positively influence the link between soil health and food quality.
• Develop easy to measure key performance indicators (KPIs) that elicit the connection between soil health, and four food quality-related characteristics (nutritional composition, tastiness, technological properties and safety).
• Adapt, integrate and demonstrate innovative methods to continuously measure the developed KPIs.
• Investigate how well current funding opportunities at all levels (EU, national, regional) address soils and human health research and innovation needs.
• Build upon existing knowledge and solutions designed and developed from previous projects such as the EIT Food initiative that addresses the challenge of soil health in a holistic way, from farm to fork, involving multiple stakeholders, highlighting their stakes in soil health and identifying potential drivers to motivate them to take action in collaboration with farmers
• Summarise the known factors influencing water, soil and plant health and how these are linked with food quality and human health.
• List the potential mechanisms for improved food nutritional quality through soil health and evaluate the current evidence.