Onsite digital technologies to monitor nutrients and chemical or biological stressors in soil and plants with relevance for food safety and nutrition

Activities under this topic will help to progress towards the objectives of the Mission ‘A Soil Deal for Europe’, in particular its operational objective 2, “Co-create and upscale place-based innovations to improve soil health in all places”.

Project results should contribute to all of the following outcomes:

• Increased scale-up, availability and use of onsite digital tools (e.g., light-based technologies, remote sensing, Artificial Intelligence (AI)) to monitor nutrients, micro-nutrients, chemical and biological stressors in soil, plants and subsequently in food in various stages of the production process (from farm to processing stages).
• Improved capacities for food safety risk mitigation and management throughout the various food production stages.

Onsite digital technologies and applications are emerging in food production and have the potential to detect chemical and biological stressors in soil and plants to help assessing, managing and eventually eliminating potential food safety risks that these stressors may pose. There is a need to improve the development and application of digital tools in primary production and food industries and boost their technological scale-up as a means to address more effectively the soil-food nexus. Moreover, those technologies will help the food industry to track safety and quality of post-harvested food grown in soils.

Proposed activities should:

• Advance and/or develop onsite digital technologies and applications (e.g., light-based technologies, remote sensing, AI) to analyse (detect and quantify) nutrients that could support appropriate interventions at the various food production stages (from farm to processing stages) to enrich soil or remove excess nutrients and micronutrients.
• Advance and/or develop onsite digital technologies and applications (e.g., light-based technologies, remote sensing, AI) to analyse (detect and quantify) chemical (contaminants, anti-nutrients, pollutants) and biological contaminants (bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites) in soil, plants and food with the aim to mitigate/manage the potential of food safety risks associated with their presence.
• Advance and/or develop digital technologies and applications for in-field detection of soil parameters with relevance for food safety and nutrition to improve soil management practices (e.g., targeted fertilization, soil remediation).
• Advance and/or develop innovative digital technologies including exploratory modelling for calibration and prediction, to detect nutrients and micronutrients, chemical and biological contaminants which have a bearing on food quality and safety.
• Identify challenges to the scale-up of existing digital technologies related to the soil-food nexus.

Proposals should also include a dedicated task, appropriate resources and a plan on how they will collaborate with other projects funded under this topic, and ensure as well synergies with projects funded under topics HORIZON-MISS-2021-SOIL-02-03: “Linking soil health to nutritional and safe food”, and HORIZON-CL6-2023-GOVERNANCE: “Digital technologies supporting plant health early detection, territory surveillance and phytosanitary measures”.

Proposals should demonstrate a route towards open access, longevity, sustainability and interoperability of knowledge and outputs through close collaboration with the Joint Research Centre’s EU Soil Observatory (EUSO).

Potentially, the projects funded under this topic could cooperate with living labs and lighthouses that will be created in this call and future calls under the Mission.

In this topic, the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.

Activities are expected to achieve TRL 7-8 by the end of the project – see General Annex B.