Organization of the EVA networks

General principles of the project include the joint selection of traits and accessions by the project partners. According to the work planning of crop-specific networks, different sets of genebank accessions are made available by the genebanks under the FAO-ITPGRFA Standard Material Transfer Agreement and multiplied by project partners in order to generate material for the following evaluations. Evaluations of agronomic, biotic and abiotic stress traits are done mostly as in-kind contributions by project partners in laboratory and field trials in multiple locations across the continent using standard experimental protocols and ontologies in order to generate comparable data. All evaluated accessions are also genotyped. All data will be collected in the EURISCO database and made openly available after an initial embargo period during which project partners have access to data through a dedicated EURISCO-EVA intranet, to incentivize the collaboration of private breeders. 

The PGRFA evaluated in the EVA networks are publicly available at the respective holding institutes and exchanged between evaluation partners throughout the project in compliance with the terms outlined in the Standard Material Transfer Agreement of the Multilateral System of the International Treaty for PGRFA. 

EVA is envisioned as a self-sustaining long-term project, executed through in-kind contributions of evaluation partners and supported financially through additional project grants for coordination and certain activities such as genotyping. Initial funding by the German government through grant agreement GenR 2019-2 (and amendment) for the period 2019-2024 is intended to kick-start activities. EVA networks will continue thereafter on a rolling circle basis with continuous cycles of selection of accessions from genebanks, multiplication of material, evaluations and data analysis, funded through sources identified by the networks. In this way, novel sources for advantageous traits will be identified in the often large but under-characterized inventories of genebanks. 

Within the Horizon2020 project AGENT (Activated GEnebank NeTwork) the EVA Wheat and Barley network is provided with funding for a third cycle of evaluations in 2022-2024.  

The Horizon infrastructure project PRO-GRACE, running from 2023 to 2025, aims at conceptualizing a European research infrastructure for plant genetic resources (PGR). It includes activities promoting the EVA networks, such as the development of standard protocols for documentation and evaluation, identification of services on PGR that could benefit EVA networks and stakeholder mapping to identify new users.  

In 2023 the ECPGR Grain Legumes Working Group started forEVA, a project under the ECPGR Grant Scheme, aimed at establishing an EVA Legumes network. Full implementation of this new network will be supported by funding from the German Ministry for Food and Agriculture (GenR 2024-2), which will also allow for the establishment of a network on perennials (fruit trees and berries). Collaboration with European projects such as Bresov, BELIS, INCREASE and Legume Generation, will facilitate resource sharing, expand the network to include key stakeholders, and boost adoption by breeders.

The three-year SusCrop-Era-Net project MineLandDiv (Mining allelic diversity of maize landraces for tolerance to abiotic and biotic stresses), coordinated by INRAE, started in March 2023 and involves several EVA Maize partners, exploiting also EVA results and providing a possibility to extend the EVA Maize project and involved stakeholders. The project proposes to mobilize European maize landraces for use in further breeding, combining different up-to-date genomic approaches, genetic and statistical methods with high throughput phenotyping, with the goal of identifying interesting landraces and favourable alleles for biotic and abiotic stresses, thereby increasing the genetic diversity of breeding gene pools and contributing to increased resilience of European agriculture.

Two other ECPGR grant scheme proposals submitted by the Maize and Solanaceae Working Groups were funded during the first call in Phase XI (2024) and will combine Working Group activities, supporting also the EVA Maize and Pepper networks, respectively, with additional genebank partners and new collections for evaluation. The Maize project MALANIRS  will use a combination of genomics and phenomics to develop a model for predicting specific traits from genebank materials using Near Infrared spectra (NIRs). The Solanaceae Working Group activity EuroPepLand will implement a trans-European pepper landrace collection for resilient agriculture.