The microbiome at the heart of sustainable food production

24 Sep 2019 | Rome, Italy

ENEA - Via Giulio Romano, 41, Rome, Italy

This event was organised and hosted by ENEA as part of the European Biotech Week 2019 at ENEA Headquarters in Rome on Tuesday 24th September 2019.

The full day event intended to outline the role and impact of microbiome towards a more sustainable and resilient food production, adhering to the EXPO 2015 leitmotiv “Produce more with less”. The event brought together 73 Italian participants including researchers, students, public and private actors.

The conference provided an opportunity for engagement and discussion for several Italian institutions and SMEs representatives involved in European initiatives and projects. It addressed finding innovative solutions derived from microbiomes to increase competitiveness and sustainability of food systems and creating products that meet consumers’ needs. The “Italian microbiome initiative for improved human health and food production” position paper by CNBBSV (Comitato Nazionale per la Biosicurezza, le Biotecnologie e le Scienze della Vita) Microbiome initiative Working Group was presented and explained. This was followed by discussions that described the activities of the Microbiome Research and Innovation projects that are funded through the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme:  Microbiome Support, SIMBA, CIRCLES, MASTER and EXCALIBUR. This discussion provided an in-depth overview of the European and Italian microbiome initiative in the agro-food sector. Later, there was a roundtable discussion was dedicated to the role of SMEs.

 

The key outcomes of the event were to:

  • Creating a national network of experts and put in place infrastructures to connect different domains interest in the microbiome food system;
  • Sharing the methodologies, omics approaches, and technological tools used for analysing and characterising microbiomes in order to minimize bias;
  • Engaging national industries of the food and agricultural domains to apply microbiome-based innovative solutions;
  • Increasing awareness, education and training.
See the agenda here

For more information see here or contact event organisers: Annamaria Bevivino (annamaria.bevivino@enea.it) and Ombretta Presenti (ombretta.presenti@enea.it)

Note: The event and discussions was hosted in Italian.