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Human plant protein intake is on the rise in many EU regions and the market for meat and dairy alternatives is undergoing annual growth rates of 14% and 11% respectively. In order to face the increasing demand for innovative products and comply with the citizens’ demands for healthy and environmentally friendly foodstuffs, novel varieties are needed and existing genetic resources in crop breading must be properly exploited. The characterisation and maintenance of food legume genetic resources and their exploitation in pre-breeding form the core development of both more sustainable agriculture and healthier food products.

Focusing on chickpea, common bean, lentil and lupin, INCREASE will implement a new approach to conserve, manage and characterise genetic resources leading to benefits on different levels. These species represent a cross-section in terms of their potential value for sustainable food production, and they are all strongly linked to the European food tradition and needs, with significant options for EU agriculture.

INCREASE is guided by the European Commission principles “open science, open innovation and open to the world” and takes advantage of digital technologies to make science and innovation more collaborative and global. For this purpose, the project tests a decentralised approach to the conservation of genetic resources by setting up a Citizen Science Experiment. The aim is to spread knowledge about legumes biodiversity and to involve citizens in evaluation and conservation activities as well as in sharing and exchanging seeds via a specifically developed INCREASE mobile app.

The INCREASE Citizen Science app

This is the central feature for the success of the experiment – everything revolves around it.

You can use it for

- your registration to participate in the experiment
- sending information on the common bean plant you grow
- recording data, e.g. about flowering time, seed size etc.
- taking pictures to document plant traits such as flower, seed and pod colours and shapes, plant growth habit, shapes of leaves all the way to images of the food you prepare with your harvest
- presenting your own favourite common beans
- access information on the European origin of the beans you will be growing based on geographical coordinates and other information associated to the original collection sites, such as altitudes etc. You will be able to find out based on DNA data from which location in America your accessions have most likely been introduced to Europe
- search for a specific trait and make a request to other EU citizens to obtain their beans

The INCREASE project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 862862.