Open Research Europe is looking for submissions to the new collection Innovation and Growth in the Bioeconomy. Successful submissions will be published Diamond Open Access at no cost to the author.

Scope

In 2012 the European Commission created its first bioeconomy strategy “Innovating for sustainable growth – A bioeconomy for Europe”. Research shows that in 2017, the bioeconomy in Europe generated 4.7% of the gross domestic product (GDP) of the EU-27 and employed 8.9% of the labour force. However, a decade on from the initial strategy, growth and jobs are unevenly distributed across the Member States.

A successful bioeconomy is expected to generate environmental, social and economic benefits, such as:

• Reducing the carbon footprint of products
• Increasing resilience to climate change shocks
• Improving efficiency and reducing waste in industry and agriculture
• Creating healthy ecosystems
• Reducing land degradation
• Contributing to plastic-free seas and oceans
• Creating jobs in rural and coastal areas
• Knowledge-sharing of value chains that can be used by SMEs
• Improving competition in markets

Research in this collection demonstrates how investment and innovation in the bioeconomy can help different sectors, such as agriculture, aquaculture, fisheries, food, and forestry, to translate research into viable products and services. It studies connections between researchers, industry representatives, and regional policy makers and stakeholders, and analyses how these connections can develop business models, new value chains, and investment opportunities to sustain growth and productivity in the bioeconomy.

Guest Advisors

Dr Calliope Panoutsou, Imperial College London (UK)

Professor Justus Wesseler, Wageningen University and Research (Netherlands) How to submit

Please register your interest in submitting to the collection by 31st May 2022 by emailing ruth.fisher@f1000.com.

Submissions to Open Research Europe must have at least one author who is involved in an ongoing or finished Horizon 2020 or Horizon Europe project and articles must be a result of that project. Please review the details of Open Research Europe’ post-publication peer-review model and our policies before you submit. We offer a variety of different article types and encourage submissions that are interdisciplinary. Submissions must be in English.

Contact

For any questions about submission or the platform please contact Ruth Fisher at ruth.fisher@f1000.com.

The workshop “Risk reduction of chemical residues in soils due to wastewater reuse” organized by Consorzio Italbiotec will focus on the scientific and technological aspects of risk reduction strategies associated with irrigation with treated wastewater and sewage sludge fertilisation by providing insights on the use of biochar as a valuable soil amendment. The event will take place online next April 26, 2022, at 09:30.

Reclaimed wastewater for agricultural purposes represents a solution for tackling the increasing demand for food and climate change challenges. Reutilizing wastewater includes water conservation and an alternative source of organic matter and nutrients for the agro-environment.
Funded by the PRIMA programme, the RESIDUE project is committed to improving the safety of agricultural products grown under the influence of waste materials used for irrigation and fertilisation by developing an innovative technology that significantly reduces the risks of transferring organic contaminants into the agricultural products.

Registration at this link.

Agenda

9.30 Welcome and Opening

The RESIDUE project: reclaimed wastewater use in agriculture.
Dr Dieter Hennecke – Fraunhofer IME, Schmallenberg

From wastewater treatment plants to our plate – The whole picture of exposure to wastewater-derived pharmaceuticals through food.
Dr Yehoshua Maor- Phytor Lab Jerusalem

Bioavailability of organic chemicals in soils: potential regulatory aspects.
Dr Jose Julio Ortega-Calvo- IRNAS-CSIC, Seville

Biochar and its use as an amendment in the composting process.
Dr Dmitri Drabkin, René Schatten – WG Geoecology, FU Berlin

11.00 Q&A Session

11:30 Conclusion

In the context of the project final conference, LANDSUPPORT is organising the “SAVE OUR SOILS” Workshop (in person) next Wednesday, 27 – Thursday, 28 April 2022, at the University of Naples in Portici, near Naples, Italy.

The project will open up to researchers and stakeholders to share and discuss results towards a very ambitious goal: the development of decision support tools – as well as other projects’ and initiatives’ insights – for key agriculture and environmental policies implementation including SDGs, CAP, New Green Deal.

This workshop will be a unique opportunity to bring together current research on this topic and policy makers and it will include project contributions to: tools for policy implementation in agriculture, land degradation and land take, and ecotourism and biodiversity. This will include the findings from the Horizon2020 LANDSUPPORT project as well as other International, European and national projects (e.g. Horizon 2020, Horizon Europe, EJP-soil, LIFE+). It will be enriched by speakers’ insights on these topics and roundtables to discuss common challenges and possible solutions towards SDG policy implementation.

If you wish to participate, please fill in the registration form by Monday, 24 January 2022, to secure your participation.

Agenda and instructions
Register for the event

In case of any questions or queries, please do not hesitate to reach out to the project management team at Modis via: management@landsupport.eu

On behalf of the European Commission, empirica is carrying out a survey on future skills in higher education for the bioeconomy in Europe. All  the experts in this field or in charge of providing or coordinating bioeconomy-related education at a higher education institution are invited to participate and fill in the questionnaire at the following link.

The results will help the European Commission develop policies to improve bioeconomy-related higher education.

Last March 15th 2022 the EuBioNet organized the workshop “Paving the way towards Sustainable Entrepreneurship Education“, in collaboration with Transition2Bio, the European Community of Practice for Bioeconomy Education, BIOSKILLS, BIOBec and the European Bioeconomy University (EBU).

This workshop involved projects and initiatives interested in the intersection of Entrepreneurship Education (EE) and Sustainable Education (SE), with a special focus on circular and sustainable bioeconomy. The aim was to identify how the cross-fertilisation of EE and SE can help design educational curricula and extra-curricular activities for sustainability-minded entrepreneurs of tomorrow.

Format
During the workshop several projects and initiatives were involved in the presentation of inspirational case studies in order to share good practices and increase knowledge about the topic in a mutual learning activity. An interactive discussion enabled to collect suggestions and inputs in order to generate ideas towards Sustainable Entrepreneurship Education.

The Agenda is available at this link.

Results
The results of the workshop are available for consultation and you can read the report here.
Find at this link the PDF collecting all the contributions from the speakers and the participants.
You can also download the PDF of the contributions collected in the MIRO board at this link.
The recordings of the entire workshop are available here.