BioHorizon Thematic Areas

BioHorizon specifically covers the thematic areas of Horizon 2020 Societal Challenge 2 (Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine and maritime and inland water research and the bioeconomy), from the Societal Challenges pillar, and KET-B (Biotechnology) from the Industrial Leadership pillar, through the support of Bio NCPs across EU Member States and Associated Countries and also in International Cooperation countries.

Within SC2, the broad lines of activities mainly focus: (1) on more sustainable and productive agriculture and forestry systems, which are both resource efficient and resilient; (2) on healthy and safe foods for all, informed consumer choices and competitive food processing methods, using less resources and producing less waste; (3) on the development of sustainable and environmentally friendly fisheries, competitive aquaculture and boosting innovation through marine biotechnology; (4) on fostering the bio-economy, by transforming conventional industrial processes and products into more bio-based resource and energy efficient ones, developing integrating biorefineries and utilizing biomass from primary production, biowaste and bio-based industry by-products.

Regarding KET-B, the areas covered include the development of emerging technology areas (such as synthetic biology, bioinformatics and systems biology), the development of industrial biotechnology for competitive industrial products and processes and the development of platform technologies (e.g. genomics, meta-genomica, proteomics, molecular tools) to enhance leadership and competitive advantage in a wide number of economic sectors.