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To meet the increasing global demand for food, feed, fibre and other plant‐derived products, a steep increase in crop productivity is a scientifically and technically challenging imperative. The CropBooster‐P project, a response to the H2020 call 'Future proofing our plants', is developing a roadmap for plant research to improve crops critical for the future of European agriculture by increasing crop yield, nutritional quality, value for non‐food applications and sustainability. However, if we want to efficiently improve crop production in Europe and prioritize methods for crop trait improvement in the coming years, we need to take into account future socio‐economic, technological and global developments, including numerous policy and socio‐economic challenges and constraints. Based on a wide range of possible global trends and key uncertainties, we developed four extreme future learning scenarios that depict complementary future developments. Here, we elaborate on how the scenarios could inform and direct future plant research, and we aim to highlight the crop improvement approaches that could be the most promising or appropriate within each of these four future world scenarios. Moreover, we discuss some key plant technology options that would need to be developed further to meet the needs of multiple future learning scenarios, such as improving methods for breeding and genetic engineering. In addition, other diverse platforms of food production may offer unrealized potential, such as underutilized terrestrial and aquatic species as alternative sources of nutrition and biomass production. We demonstrate that although several methods or traits could facilitate a more efficient crop production system in some of the scenarios, others may offer great potential in all four of the future learning scenarios. Altogether, this indicates that depending on which future we are heading toward, distinct plant research fields should be given priority if we are to meet our food, feed and non‐food biomass production needs in the coming decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world needs more than double its current agricultural productivity by 2050 to produce enough food and feed, as well as to provide feedstock for the bioeconomy. These future increases will not only need to be sustainable but without comprommising the nutritional quality, and ideally also need to decrease greenhouse gas emissions and increase carbon sequestration to help mitigate the consequences of global climate change. These challenges could be tackled by developing and integrating new future‐proof crops into our food system. The H2020 CropBooster‐P project sets out plant‐centered breeding approaches guided by a broad socio‐economic and societal support. First, the potential approaches for breeding crops with sustainably increased yields adapted to the future climate of Europe are identified. These crop‐breeding options are subsequently prioritized and their adoption considered by experts across the agri‐food system and the wider public, taking into account environmental, economic and other technical criteria. In this way, a specific research agenda to future‐proof our crops was developed, supported by an eventual implementation plan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genetically modified (GM) maize expressing the insecticidal protein Cry1Ab from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt maize) is the only GM crop planted commercially in the European Union (EU). Cultivation in accordance with Directive 2001/18/EC demands post-market environmental monitoring (PMEM) to ensure the detection and prevention of adverse effects on the environment possibly deriving from commercial cultivation. Based on a seminar organized in Berlin, Germany, in April 2008 by the EU-funded Biosafenet project, the present paper reflects on experiences and hurdles faced during the implementation of PMEM for Bt maize. It reviews and reconsiders PMEM programs of Bt maize in view of existing experiences from cultivation, current monitoring activities initiated by Member States and applicants, proposed monitoring strategies and methods as well as potential environmental impacts of cultivation. Future challenges will arise from large-scale and cumulative cultivation of various events. This will demand optimized organization structures for data collation and integration to support further decision-making and management., (© ISBR, EDP Sciences, 2010.)