Participants at the ISHS symposium
Final BreedingValue Outreach event at MACFRUT trade fair
Also this year, the BreedingValue consortium didn’t want to miss the opportunity to contribute to the MACFRUT trade fair which took place from May 6-9, 2025 at the Expo Center in Rimini, Italy.
Macfrut is a leading trade fair for professionals operating in the national and international fruit and vegetables sector and was therefore an excellent opportunity to present the activities and results of the 4,5 year research initiative.
This years‘ contribution to Macfrut included an own BreedingValue booth, supported by the project coordinating institution Marche Polytechnic University (UPM) and the partner institution CNR-IBE.
The CNR-IBE group conducted a consumer study during the 3-day MACFRUT Fair. Each day focused on a one of the berry studied in Breeding Value project. The test asked participants to evaluate both the visual appeal and the taste of the samples, and included hedonic evaluations, sensory descriptions of the samples, and the creation of an “Ideal Berry” profile, both for taste. On the first day, consumers tasted four blueberry genotypes, provided by BV Partner Sant’Orsola and other companies. More than 170 participants contributed to identifying the most appreciated cultivars and their associated sensory characteristics. On the following days, the tests were conducted for Sant’Orsola raspberries (3 samples, 193 participants) and strawberries (6 samples, 100 participants). The high attendance and the professional profile of the international MACFRUT Fair visitors allowed for a clear understanding of consumer preferences and expectations regarding berry sensory quality.
Results of BreedingValue were also presented at the "Berry Area“, a special section at Macfrut dedicated to the strawberry and berry industry. BreedingValue organised a 90 mins workshop with presentations by several project partners covering topics like "genomic selection in strawberry“ (Justine Perrotte, INVENIO), "Metabolomic studies for berry fruit quality“ (Josè Vallarino, University of Malaga) as well as "Berry breeding: a genomic and bioinformatics perspective“ (Björn Usadel, FZ-Juelich). The presentations are available for download here.
Last but not least, Macfrut 2025 also hosted the International Symposium on Biotechnological Tools in Horticulture, sponsored by the International Society of Horticultural Science (ISHS).
This symposium was organised by the Department of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences (D3A) of the Marche Polytechnic University and offered an excellent platform to several BreedingValue partners to present and discuss their project results and to enter into a dialogue among leading and emerging scientists, experts, and students from all over the world. The symposiums‘ main themes included the application of biotechnological tools in horticulture, starting from plant in vitro culture aspects to functional genomics studies, to the various "omics" for plant genotyping/phenotyping, the new genomic techniques aimed at the genetic improvement of species of agronomic interest, up to aspects related to the socio-economic impact, biosafety, and public acceptance related to the use of biotechnology in the fruit and vegetable sector.
The BreedingValue coordinator Bruno Mezzetti (UPM) acted as a member of the organising committee. As a keynote speaker, Björn Usadel (FZ-Juelich) gave an oral presentation entitled "Integration of Multi Omic Data for Improved Horticultural Crops Quality Traits" where he showed how multi-omics data can be leveraged by systematically incorporating a priori knowledge about metabolic networks and reactions, coupling these to both known and novel genes, and how AI-based approaches are significantly advancing efforts to bridge the gap between the "dark" regions of the genome and phenotypic quality traits. Additionally, project partners Amèlia Gaston (INRAe), Ebru Kafkas (UCUK) as well as Justine Perrotte (INVENIO) gave oral and poster presentations showing their latest research results all connected to BreedingValue activities.
As concluding activity of the symposium, a Biotech school for young researchers and PhD students was held at the D3A-UPM in Ancona where BreedingValue partners Jose Vallarino and Björn Usadel participated as speakers giving insights into Metabolomics as biotechnological tool in horticulture.
Björn Usadel at the BioTech school
Berry tasting at MACFRUT fair