Plant ETP connects researchers, breeders, farmers and seed sector stakeholders to align priorities for European plant breeding innovation. Its work spans NGT implementation, future EU research funding, COLiBRI, climate resilience, skills development and communication across Europe’s plant innovation ecosystem.
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From NGT implementation and future EU research funding to COLiBRI and climate resilience, Plant ETP is working to align priorities across Europe’s plant breeding and seed sector
Europe does not suffer from a shortage of plant science, breeding expertise or agricultural knowledge. The harder question is how to connect those strengths, identify common priorities and translate research into innovations that respond to what farmers and the plant breeding and seed sector actually need.
That connecting role is where Plants for the Future European Technology Platform, better known as Plant ETP, sees its place. Plant ETP brings together organisations from academia, the plant breeding and seed sector, farming and other parts of the European plant innovation landscape. It currently brings together 20 members and two associate members, representing at least eight European countries.
Rather than attempting to speak for every organisation in the European plant sector, the platform seeks common ground among its members on research, innovation and related policy priorities. According to Dr. Germán Vighi, Executive Manager of Plant ETP, that distinction is important. “Plant ETP does not claim to speak for every organisation or interest within the European plant sector,” says Vighi. “We speak on the specific topics that fall within our remit and for which our members have developed and endorsed common positions.”
Finding Common Ground
Bringing researchers, plant breeders and farmers around the same table does not mean they automatically share identical priorities. But Vighi says there is usually more common ground than might initially be expected. Climate resilience, sustainable productivity, access to innovation, research funding and skills development affect all three groups, even when they approach those issues from different perspectives.
Plant ETP’s governance is designed around that multi stakeholder structure. Strategic direction comes from its board of directors, while the general assembly has a role in discussion, validation and decision making. Consensus is the objective at both levels.
“No multi stakeholder organisation can claim that every member agrees with every word of every document,” Vighi says. “What we can say is that the positions endorsed by Plant ETP reflect broad agreement across our membership and are supported through our governance processes.”
The platform’s role reflects the broader concept behind European Technology Platforms, or ETPs. For roughly two decades, ETPs have operated as industry-led but multi-stakeholder initiatives bringing together diverse actors to develop long term research and innovation agendas in strategic areas of the European economy. In 2024, the Council of the European Union highlighted European Technology Platforms among the mechanisms that could contribute to Europe’s innovation and competitiveness objectives. For Plant ETP, however, the value of collaboration ultimately must go beyond meetings and position papers.
From Discussion to Research Projects
One example is COLiBRI, the Horizon Europe funded Collaborative Crop Breeding Research and Innovation for a Green Europe project. Plant ETP says it was closely involved before the project existed, advocating towards the European Commission and other policymakers for greater support for plant breeding research and helping during the early stages of consortium building.
Now that COLiBRI is under way, Plant ETP coordinates the work package responsible for developing a European roadmap for plant breeding research and innovation.
“The roadmap aims to align priorities across stakeholders, identify research and infrastructure needs and strengthen collaboration throughout the plant breeding value chain,” says Natascha Weinberger, Ph.D., Research & Communication Officer at Plant ETP. The objective is not simply to produce another report. Beyond identifying future research and innovation priorities, the project will also deliver an implementation plan that sets out funding approaches, policy priorities, governance mechanisms and actions needed to turn the roadmap into a long-term, coordinated European plant breeding research and innovation framework; and to connect communities that might otherwise work separately and make the case for future research investment based on a shared assessment of what European plant breeding requires.
Another example is the recently completed GeneBEcon project, which brought together 18 partner organisations from 11 European countries. The consortium combined universities, research organisations, companies and other stakeholders working across the bioeconomy.
GeneBEcon explored applications of gene editing in potato and microalgae and examined how such technologies could support a more sustainable bioeconomy. Among the project’s expected impacts, modified potato starch varieties developed for specific processing requirements could potentially reduce chemical use by as much as 75,000 tonnes and energy consumption by 7.5 GWh annually across the EU. Weinberger says discussions continue around the valorisation of the project’s results and how its outcomes could be carried forward.
The portfolio is also expanding. Plant ETP is due to participate in the Horizon Europe funded Gain4Fruits project, expected to start in early 2027. The project will focus on developing more resilient and sustainable grapevine and citrus varieties through genomic, phenomic and environmental data combined with AI and predictive breeding tools. Plant ETP will lead stakeholder and policy engagement activities.
Taken together, these projects illustrate the role the platform wants to play: helping to connect research questions, breeding requirements, policy priorities and eventual users.
The NGT Question Moves to Implementation
One of the most immediate policy priorities is New Genomic Techniques (NGT). After years of debate over how Europe should regulate NGT plants, the adoption of the new framework marked a major change in direction for European plant breeding, bringing to a close a regulatory journey that Seed World Europe has followed closely over several years.
That debate entered a new phase in June 2026 with the adoption of the EU Regulation on plants obtained by certain NGTs and their products. Most of the regulation will apply from 17 July 2028. For Plant ETP, attention therefore moves from the legislative negotiations towards implementation.
One issue the platform has identified concerns verification of whether a plant was developed using NGTs. That question sits within a broader discussion about how the technical criteria in the new Regulation will operate in practice, including concerns over whether provisions such as the 20-nucleotide threshold could unnecessarily limit some plant breeding applications.
Vighi says Plant ETP considers it important that data requirements remain proportionate and that variety developers retain sufficient flexibility to determine the most appropriate verification methodology.
That reflects a broader principle behind the platform’s NGT work: implementation should provide regulatory certainty without creating unnecessarily prescriptive technical requirements that could restrict the use of new breeding approaches.
The platform argues that its position carries particular value because researchers, farmers and representatives from the plant breeding and seed sector have to find common ground before a shared position is adopted.
“NGTs are a good example of where our multi stakeholder character matters,” says Vighi. “Different groups bring different questions to the discussion, but our task is to identify where those perspectives converge and develop positions that can command broad support.”
Making Plant Breeding Visible in Europe’s Next Research Programme
Money, inevitably, is another part of the equation. The European Commission has proposed a new Horizon Europe programme covering 2028 to 2034, working in close connection with the proposed European Competitiveness Fund.
For Plant ETP, the negotiations over the next EU research framework are an opportunity to strengthen recognition of plant breeding as a strategic research priority. The platform has previously highlighted the need for stronger and more sustained public investment in plant breeding research, a concern explored in an earlier Seed World Europe interview on the future of EU plant breeding and research funding.
The platform has three principal objectives in this area. It wants agriculture and the bioeconomy to be explicitly recognised within the relevant funding windows, closer alignment between European research priorities and the research needs of the plant breeding and seed sector, and greater consideration of the Strategic Research and Innovation Agendas developed by European Technology Platforms and partnerships when future programmes and funding priorities are designed.
Plant ETP published its own Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda, or SRIA, setting out priorities for plant research and innovation. According to Vighi, the question is not simply how much money is available, but whether research programmes recognise the contribution plant breeding can make across several European objectives.
Those range from food security and agricultural competitiveness to climate adaptation and the bioeconomy. The European Commission’s Vision for Agriculture and Food, published in 2025, puts research, innovation, knowledge and skills among the elements needed to build a competitive and resilient European agri-food system. More recently, the Commission’s Protein Action Plan explicitly identified crop innovation, seeds, plant breeding and seed development as areas for investment as Europe seeks to strengthen its protein production and reduce dependence on imports.
For Plant ETP, such recognition reinforces the argument that plant breeding should not be treated as an isolated agricultural activity, but as a strategic tool contributing to wider European objectives around resilience, food security, competitiveness and strategic autonomy.
Breeding for a Changing Climate
Climate resilience provides perhaps the clearest example of why that visibility matters. As climate adaptation increasingly becomes a baseline requirement for plant breeding, breeders are being asked to develop varieties capable of maintaining performance under heat, drought, flooding and changing pest and disease pressures. But those stresses rarely occur independently. Plant ETP therefore wants greater recognition not only of individual stress traits, but also of the interaction between genotype, environment and management, often referred to as GxExM.
The platform is following the development of the EU’s climate resilience agenda with this in mind. Its argument is that plant breeding should be regarded as part of Europe’s climate adaptation toolbox rather than viewed solely through the narrower lens of agricultural productivity.
The same reasoning extends into the bioeconomy. Crops increasingly provide inputs not only for food and feed but also for materials and other biological value chains. Breeding objectives can consequently become more complex as researchers and breeders seek multipurpose crops suited to multiple end uses while maintaining yield, resilience and resource efficiency.
Building Skills Alongside Technologies
Technology alone will not determine whether European plant breeding remains competitive. Plant ETP has also been involved in FIELDS, an initiative focused on future skills needs in the agri-food sector. The project developed skills strategies, training programmes and educational resources intended to prepare professionals for changing technological and sustainability requirements.
For the plant breeding community, that issue has particular urgency. Advances in genomics, phenotyping, data science, bioinformatics and predictive breeding are changing the combination of expertise required of the next generation of breeders and researchers. That is one reason communication has become the third major priority Plant ETP identifies alongside NGT implementation and research funding.
Weinberger says communication should not be understood simply as promoting technologies after they have been developed. It also means creating dialogue between scientists, breeders, farmers, policymakers and society while helping younger generations understand the opportunities available in plant science and breeding.
Plant ETP uses workshops, stakeholder dialogues, project activities and its network to facilitate that exchange. Its published position papers and other resources provide another route for communicating the priorities emerging from its membership.
Three Priorities for the Years Ahead
The platforms work is continuous and wide-ranging, but three priorities currently provide a particular focus for its activities. The first is implementation of Europe’s new NGT framework, including technical questions that will determine how effectively the legislation operates in practice.
The second is the development of the next European research and innovation landscape, particularly Horizon Europe 2028 to 2034 and the European Competitiveness Fund. Plant ETP wants plant science, breeding and agricultural innovation to receive sufficient visibility and support within those programmes.
The third is communication: strengthening understanding of the contribution that plant science and breeding can make to climate resilience, sustainability, food security and competitiveness, while connecting the different communities involved.
COLiBRI brings several of those strands together. By developing a European roadmap and building a broader network around plant breeding research, the project provides an opportunity to move from individual initiatives towards a more coordinated view of Europe’s longer term needs. For Vighi, that coordination is ultimately the reason a platform such as Plant ETP exists.
Europe already possesses world class researchers, experienced plant breeders, innovative companies and farmers with first hand knowledge of rapidly changing production conditions. The challenge is making sure those communities do not operate as separate pieces of the innovation system. Plant ETP’s ambition is to help put those pieces together.
Three Perspectives on Plant ETP
ACADEMIA
“Plant ETP provides academic institutions engaged in plant biology and agriculture research with a unique opportunity to gain access and directly interact with the industry and farming sectors in the area. Working together is more needed than ever if we are to successfully transition to a more sustainable agriculture and to maintain the prominence of the agri-food sector in Europe: a circular endeavour for the three sectors that, for academia, involves everything from the training of researchers to advancing excellent fundamental science and fostering its translation and impact.”
José Luis Riechmann, ICREA Research Professor, CRAG
PLANT BREEDING AND SEED SECTOR
“As a member of the Board of Plant ETP, I value the platform as a unique opportunity to engage with the wider plant sector community, exchange knowledge and perspectives, and participate in strategic dialogue across the plant innovation ecosystem for sustainable agriculture. The strength of the network lies in its ability to bring diverse stakeholders together around shared challenges and innovation opportunities.”
Conchi Novillo, Scientific Affairs Manager, Seeds & Traits, Bayer Crop Science
Board Member, Plant ETP
FARMING
“EU farmers and agri-cooperatives prioritise innovation, research and technology to modernise agriculture. Amid global challenges, wars at Europe’s border and climate change, ensuring food security and sustainability is a key priority. Achieving these goals requires collaboration, innovation and strategic investments. Copa-Cogeca involvement in ETP is key in this respect, allowing us to work with academia and industry stakeholders to promote innovation that starts on the ground with our farmers. Advanced technologies such as plant breeding and precision agriculture can improve productivity, sustainability and competitiveness in our farming sector while ensuring a fair income.”
Patrick Pagani, Deputy Secretary General, Copa-Cogeca
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