EU Green Week 2025

Harnessing plant breeding for a more circular bioeconomy

2nd of June 2025, Brussels & Online – Plants for the Future ETP hosted a Green Week Partner Event titled “Harnessing Plant Breeding for a Circular Bioeconomy” at the Copa-Cogeca headquarters in Brussels, with around 50 participants joining both in person and online.

The event highlighted how plant breeding can accelerate the shift away from fossil fuel dependance, towards more a sustainable and resilient bioeconomy based on plant biomass. Discussions focused on the role of purpose-designed crops, the importance of involving farmers from the beginning, and the need for more strategic, long-term investment in European plant breeding R&I.

 

Welcome and Opening Remarks
Elli Tsiforou, Secretary General of COPA-COGECA

Elli Tsiforou opened the event by acknowledging the increasingly complex environment for farmers and agricultural cooperatives, shaped by geopolitical instability, inflation, climate shocks, and emerging diseases. She underlined that agriculture is central to Europe’s sovereignty, especially through the “four Fs”: food, feed, fibre, and fuel — all essential for a resilient society and rural economy.

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Leveraging plant breeding R&I for optimising biomass for a circular bioeconomy
Wout Boerjan, Professor at the Flemish Institute for Biotechnology (VIB)

Wout Boerjan explained how plants capture CO₂, water, and sunlight to produce biomass, which can replace fossil-based resources in fuels, chemicals, and diverse materials. He detailed the composition of lignocellulosic biomass and its valorisation potential — particularly lignin, which can be depolymerised for applications like resins, adhesives, carbon fibres, and even in biomedical and cosmetic industries.

He advocated for purpose-designed breeding to tailor crops to specific industrial uses. For instance, lowering lignin content in plants can reduce processing costs for the pulp and paper industry. He also highlighted underutilised crops like industrial hemp, miscanthus, switchgrass, and others as promising options for bioeconomy applications.

Boerjan presented several advanced breeding technologies — including genomics, AI, gene editing, speed breeding, and robotised phenotyping — as key tools for creating multipurpose, climate-resilient crops. He shared examples of how gene-edited maize and trees with lower lignin content improve processing efficiency, and how altering lignin chemistry in grasses could support bioplastics.

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The challenges in breeding multipurpose crops
Amrit Nanda, Executive Manager, Plants for the Future ETP

Nanda highlighted the challenge of phasing out fossil fuels without compromising food security, stressing the need to avoid competition between food, feed, and biomass. She advocated for multipurpose crops that can serve several functions simultaneously — an essential requirement for a more sustainable and circular bioeconomy.

She also presented a historical overview of how scientific breeding has driven yield improvements, enabling EU agricultural production to rise dramatically while decoupling from land use. However, she warned that productivity gains are slowing, and that modern breeding now also tackles resource efficiency, resilience, and nutritional quality —with very long breeding timelines (10-20 years), especially for underutilised species (20+ years).

Find the presentation slides here.

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Better valorisation of biomass provides new business opportunities for farmers
Max Schulman, Finnish farmer and advisor to MTK (Central Union of Agricultural Producers and Forest Owners)

Max Schulman spoke from a farmer’s perspective, noting the shrinking amount of productive land in Europe and the pressure to extract more value from each hectare. He emphasised that farmers must be involved early in crop development processes and cannot be expected to take all the risk alone.

He stressed that market visibility, supportive legislation, and clear business opportunities are necessary for farmers to adopt new crops. He also highlighted the diversity of EU agricultural conditions, ranging from short to long growing seasons across regions, and pointed to the need for cover crops, intermediate crops, and particularly nitrogen-fixing species to improve economic and environmental sustainability.

Find the presentation slides here.

 

Are we investing enough to fully exploit plant breeding for a more circular bioeconomy?
Amrit Nanda, Executive Manager, Plants for the Future ETP

In her second presentation, Amrit Nanda presented findings from the Plants for the Future report on EU investment trends in plant breeding R&I from FP7 (2007) to half of Horizon Europe (2024). The analysis showed that while total EU R&I funding has increased, the allocation to plant breeding-related research has declined. She highlighted the mismatch between policy priorities and actual investment, and stressed the need for a dedicated mechanism (public private partnership) to ensure sufficient, long term and EU-wide coordinated support for R&I in plant breeding in FP10.

Find the presentation slides here.

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The panel discussion brought together insights from all speakers. Key takeaways included:

  • The growing role of the private sector, which now accounts for nearly one-third of partners in Horizon Europe plant breeding projects — but still received in average less funding than private partners from other sectors.
  • The need to move away from fragmented, short-term research projects towards coordinated, long-term funding mechanisms across all Technology Readiness Levels.
  • A concern that plant breeding is often misunderstood as just one tool among many, rather than a pillar of agri-food systems and the bioeconomy.
  • A call to retain knowledge and build continuity, as 70% of project participants engaged only once, resulting in loss of expertise after project end.
  • Recognition that the current political climate, with rising energy independence goals, presents a window of opportunity for the bioeconomy, including biofuels — provided that farmers benefit and the value is distributed fairly across the chain.
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“Plant breeding has a huge potential to contribute more to a sustainable, resilient and circular bioeconomy, providing sufficient food, feed and raw bio-based materials, but we are currently only scratching the surface.” explained  Amrit Nanda.

 

Read more on our past EU Green Week partner events and communication efforts from past years: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021 and 2020.

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