FORESTOPTIONS

The FORESTOPTIONS proposal will be submitted to the 2021 Horizon Europe call, to a topic (HORIZON-CL6-2021-BIODIV-01-15) that revolves around the protection and sustainable management of forest genetic resources (FGR). The total indicative budget for this Research and Innovation Action is of EUR 8.00 million. European forests are largely undomesticated and contain large amounts of genetic diversity. Thus, we can benefit of these largely untapped FGR to produce added value, maintain ecosystem services, and meet the needs of the EU in terms of climate change mitigation, increased resilience, and biomass (and other forest products) provisioning. Research related to use of FGR and the diversification of forest reproductive materials can also help for the implementation of the European Green Deal and the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, which plans to plant over 3 billion trees by the year 2030. Work on the development of this proposal has been started by a core network of 14 partners providing the necessary multidisciplinary expertise and covering all main climate and biogeographical regions in Europe (France, Spain, Italy, Austria, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Romania, Denmark and Finland). In addition, we have included in the consortium a strong representation of the nursery sector and, importantly, the ONF (French National Forest Service), as a major end-user. Other important actors and end-users, in particular those involved in operative forestry plantations and ecosystem restoration, will be identified in the next months and added to the consortium. Collectively, we have identified several innovative actions and cutting-edge research. FORESTOPTIONS addresses all the topics requested by the Call, as well as the four main expected outcomes: i) Enhanced cooperation and knowledge sharing on deployment and conservation of FGR in Europe; ii) Better conservation of unique tree lineages for forest ecosystem restoration and management; iii) Sustainable use of genetic resources within the forest community in a climate change context; and iv) Efficient implementation of the ABS (access and benefit sharing) regulation in the EU. It will also allow to consolidate France as the European leader for research and innovation in conservation and sustainable use of FGR, a process already started via the coordination of other previous and on-going H2020 projects and through the participation of France in EUFORGEN. Moreover, it will project the French scientific contributions on FGR outside Europe, linking with a rich international community, in particular in North America, and federate efforts within France, stimulating multidisciplinary research and allowing to channelize regional resources (e.g. Regional projects, GPRs) to address a topic with major environmental and societal importance.