STRENGTHENING CAPACITIES AND PROMOTING INNOVATION IN PLANTOMICS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SFAX

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Global climate change is seriously threatening food security. Globally, agriculture must find alternatives for chemical fertilisers that contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions- and pesticides. Advanced plant breeding and biotechnology tools offer great opportunities to devise sustainable solutions for future farming. Next-generation sequencing technologies has created new research and innovation potential in genomics and transcriptomics. Also, groundbreaking proteomics, metabolomics and phenomics methods now generate big data beneficial to plant biotechnology and sustainable agriculture. In Tunisia, the Research and Innovation systems are not yet sufficiently developed to fully seize the opportunities made by the availability of omics tools to participate in the necessary transition to a sustainable and climate-neutral agriculture. At the University of Sfax (USF), the lack of strong scientific knowledge in plant omics technologies among researchers and of tailor-made plant technology platforms are major constraints to the development of sustainable and resilient agro-systems. The objective of INPLANTOMICS is to foster scientific excellence and innovation at the USF for the future implementation of the first North African plant biotechnological platform promoting sustainable agriculture and healthy nutrition, at the light of a strong European network and partnership. Equipped with the most advanced omics technologies this platform will greatly improve the transfer of knowledge and innovation to researchers and stakeholders including farmers, breeders, nurserymen and agri-food producers.