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International audience; The growing world population and global increases in the standard of living both result in an increasing demand for food, feed and other plant- derived products. In the coming years, plant- based research will be among the major drivers ensuring food security and the expansion of the bio- based economy. Crop productivity is determined by several factors, including the available physical and agricultural resources, crop management, and the resource use efficiency, quality and intrinsic yield potential of the chosen crop. This review focuses on intrinsic yield potential, since understanding its determinants and their biological basis will allow to maximize the plant's potential in food and energy production. Yield potential is determined by a variety of complex traits that integrate strictly regulated processes and their underlying gene regulatory networks. Due to this inherent complexity, numerous potential targets have been identified that could be exploited to increase crop yield. These encompass diverse metabolic and physical processes at the cellular, organ and canopy level. We present an overview of some of the distinct biological processes considered to be crucial for yield determination that could further be exploited to improve future crop productivity.

Executive summary: Stabilising and increasing crop yields in the face of global climate change, while safeguarding biodiversity and suppling high-quality food, feed, and biomass are a priority for Europe. A second Green Revolution in crop production is needed to meet future crop biomass and yield demands. This represents a huge challenge to all agricultural value chain players. Multiple new crop technologies including molecular markers for key traits to support modern breeding are already at Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) 3-5, although to date, efforts have been fragmented and small scale. The CropBooster Program proposes a coordinated European Research Agenda designed to accelerate the development of improved crops in line with societal expectations. These future-proofed crops will help European agriculture transition to a sustainable climate-ready model that addresses food security concerns and meets the needs of Europe’s bioeconomy.

This Roadmap has been developed in the CropBooster-P project (EC Grant Agreement 817690). This is a summary of the detailed CropBooster Strategic Research Agenda and CropBooster-P White Paper., The format is high resolution, single pages.

The realisation of the full objectives of international policies targeting global food security and climate change mitigation, including the European Green Deal, United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Paris Climate Agreement COP21 and transition away from a fossil-carbon industrial base to one that is more bio-based, requires that we (i) sustainably increase the yield, nutritional quality, and biodiversity of major crop species, (ii) select climate-ready crops that are adapted to future weather dynamic and (iii) increase the resource use efficiency of crops to preserve natural resources, such as fresh water and phosphate and reducing the environmental burden arising from the application of nitrogenous fertiliser. Advanced scientific knowledge and tools for research and crop breeding already provide an excellent platform to build on. A long-term Strategic Research Agenda now needs to be agreed and priorities set to deliver blueprints for climate resilient future-proofed crops. This strategy should then be implemented through an innovative collaborative approach that combines the joint knowledge base of the research and industrial communities, with multi-stakeholder involvement and strong support from policy makers. This white paper has been compiled from contributions from several experts across the field of plant sciences. The CropBooster-P project has developed this strategic research agenda for a crop improvement programme that will provide the genetic innovation to improve and future proof our crop plants. It builds a strong collaboration between plant scientists and modellers, physicists, soil scientists, engineers and coders, biomathematicians, agronomists, plant breeders and farmers. The goal is to exploit the largely untapped genetic diversity that exists within the wild relatives and ancient and heirloom varieties of our crop plants to improve our crops so they will be more resilient, high yielding, resource efficient, nutritious, and ready for the future climate of Europe. The knowledge and technology to reach this goal springs from the transformative developments that have occurred in the last 20 years in genomics, phenomics, crop sciences, molecular plant sciences, agronomy, and plant breeding.

The CropBooster Program proposes an exciting strategic Research and Innovation Roadmap that builds on current advances in plant science and crop research. This will combine research excellence distributed within the European Research Area with professional expertise from plant breeders, growers and the Bioeconomy value chains. The Program will deliver breakthrough translational research and deliver blueprints for future-proofed crops designed to address emerging environmental threats to crop production and improve food security and the sustainable supply of plant-based materials. The CropBooster Program science-based “blueprints” for improved crop plants will address key critical challenges including: More efficient use of resources or inputs in agriculture (in the case of CropBooster the primary resources are water, and nutrients (e.g. Nitrogen and Phosphorus) Increasing crop yields to provide sufficient food for the growing global population. This population is expected to have an increased per capita food demand, estimates suggest crop production may need to increase by up to 110% Transitioning to a more sustainable bioeconomy to meet increasing demands for biobased materials and products. New feedstock crops and cell factories will be better designed to meet the needs of processors and end users. The adaptation of crops to be resilient to climate change: this will affect different regions in Europe differently including changes in average climate and increasing weather extremes. Increasing the nutritional value and other quality parameters of future crops. The mitigation of greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide, fixed by photosynthesis, can be sequestered within plants or below ground as soil organic carbon. The need to reserve space for natural ecosystems and therefore to increase yields and sustainability without any expansion of the area of croplands., This document has benefited from contributions from multiple experts – the authoring team and main contributors are listed in Section 12.1. This document would not have been possible without their generous support and contributions.

International audience; Depending on how the future will unfold, today's progress in biotechnology research has greater or lesser potential to be the basis of subsequent innovation. Tracking progress against indicators for different future scenarios will help to focus, emphasize, or de-emphasize discovery research in a timely manner and to maximize the chance for successful innovation. In this paper, we show how learning scenarios with a 2050 time horizon help to recognize the implications of political and societal developments on the innovation potential of ongoing biotechnological research. We also propose a model to further increase open innovation between academia and the biotechnology value chain to help fundamental research explore discovery fields that have a greater chance to be valuable for applied research.

Thermochemical and biochemical technologies offer new possibilities for increasing the use of biomass for high-efficiency power and heat production as well as in producing cost-effective renewable fuels for the transport sector. The R&D needs of different individual technologies and an overview of the long-term vision is given in the report

The growing world population and global increases in the standard of living both result in an increasing demand for food, feed and other plant-derived products. In the coming years, plant-based research will be among the major drivers ensuring food security and the expansion of the bio-based economy. Crop productivity is determined by several factors, including the available physical and agricultural resources, crop management, and the resource use efficiency, quality and intrinsic yield potential of the chosen crop. This review focuses on intrinsic yield potential, since understanding its determinants and their biological basis will allow to maximize the plant's potential in food and energy production. Yield potential is determined by a variety of complex traits that integrate strictly regulated processes and their underlying gene regulatory networks. Due to this inherent complexity, numerous potential targets have been identified that could be exploited to increase crop yield. These encompass diverse metabolic and physical processes at the cellular, organ and canopy level. We present an overview of some of the distinct biological processes considered to be crucial for yield determination that could further be exploited to improve future crop productivity.

Simple Summary Our climate is changing and the world population is growing to an estimated 10 billion people by 2050. This may cause serious problems in global food supply, protection of the environment and safeguarding Earth’s biodiversity. To face these challenges, agriculture will have to adapt and a key element in this will be the development of “future-proof” crops. These crops will not only have to be high-yielding, but also should be able to withstand future climate conditions and will have to make very efficient use of scarce resources such as water, phosphorus and minerals. Future crops should not only sustainably give access to sufficient, nutritious, and diverse food to a worldwide growing population, but also support the circular bio-based economy and contribute to a lower atmospheric CO2 concentration to counteract global warming. Future-proofing our crops is an urgent issue and a challenging goal that only can be realized by large-scale, international research cooperation. We call for international action and propose a pan-European research and innovation initiative, the CropBooster Program, to mobilize the European plant research community and all interested actors in agri-food research and innovation to face the challenge. Abstract The realization of the full objectives of international policies targeting global food security and climate change mitigation, including the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Climate Agreement COP21 and the European Green Deal, requires that we (i) sustainably increase the yield, nutritional quality and biodiversity of major crop species, (ii) select climate-ready crops that are adapted to future weather dynamic and (iii) increase the resource use efficiency of crops for sustainably preserving natural resources. Ultimately, the grand challenge to be met by agriculture is to sustainably provide access to sufficient, nutritious and diverse food to a worldwide growing population, and to support the circular bio-based economy. Future-proofing our crops is an urgent issue and a challenging goal, involving a diversity of crop species in differing agricultural regimes and under multiple environmental drivers, providing versatile crop-breeding solutions within wider socio-economic-ecological systems. This goal can only be realized by a large-scale, international research cooperation. We call for international action and propose a pan-European research initiative, the CropBooster Program, to mobilize the European plant research community and interconnect it with the interdisciplinary expertise necessary to face the challenge.