ERA-NET Cofund on Blue Bioeconomy
The H2020 Blue Bioeconomy ERA-NET COFUND (BlueBio) was established as a coordinated R&D funding scheme to strengthen Europe’s position in the blue bioeconomy.
BlueBio was built on the collaboration between JPI Oceans and the former ERA-NETs COFASP and ERA MBT. Its legacy is continued by the Horizon Europe Partnerships Sustainable Blue Economy and Sustainable Food Systems, the Mission Restore our ocean and waters by 2030 and the Circular Biobased Europe – Joint Undertaking.
From 1 December 2018 to 31 May 2024, BlueBio worked to address gaps such as:
- developing innovative uses of underutilised and waste material from fisheries and aquaculture to achieve zero waste;
- using biotechnology and ICT to develop smart, efficient, traceable food systems and create synergies between aquaculture and fisheries (genetic assessment and digitalisation);
- unlock the potential of microbiomes to support growth in aquaculture, fisheries, and food processing and biotechnology; apply the latest developments in ICT (IoT, machine learning, big data) to the blue bioeconomy;
- creating predictive tools to improve the identification and targeting of biodiversity “hot-spots” in the oceans (omics-based technologies);
- exploring synergies with land-based production in areas such as food and feed production and processing, biorefining, bioenergy, biomaterials, chemicals and nutrients and maximise the use of aquatic bioresources in terrestrial value chains;
- improving aquaculture and wild harvesting of stocks by support for the creation of innovative feeds, improved brood stocks, by introducing new species, defining stock baselines, and assessing stocks and by encouraging the adoption of novel production technologies.
The purpose was to identify new and improve existing ways of bringing bio-based products and services to the market, and to find new ways of creating value from in the blue bioeconomy. BlueBio launched four calls, funding projects along the whole value chain from bioprospecting to processing and market applications, with Technology Readiness Levels from exploration to pilot scale.
The 2018 call cofunded with the European Commission had a broad scope, encompassing the whole blue bioeconomy. The call funded 19 projects with a total of € 24.25 million. For the two subsequent additional calls the calls scopes were chosen to fill funding gaps along the value chain. The final additional call was a targeted call to amplify the impact of the already funded BlueBio projects.
There were 30 partners participating in BlueBio, from Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Malta, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Sweden.