EU4Algae The Insider’s Perspective: How BioAtlantis pioneering technology is helping create climate-resilient cereals under the EU-funded BOOSTER project!

Thus, we will be ‘giving the floor’ to all partners to share their projects and success stories and disseminate them with the Algae community. Keep reading to know more about the latest company to have made it to this third edition!

BioAtlantis: Helping implement novel technologies to create climate-resilient cereals 

BioAtlantis is a leading biotechnology company whose seaweed extraction facility is the largest of its kind in Britain or Ireland. Headquartered in Tralee, County Kerry, Ireland, BioAtlantis has partnered with the recent European research project BOOSTER. The €4.9 million EU-funded project is under the European Commission’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme (Grant agreement ID: 101081770) and will have a 4-year duration. 

BOOSTER focuses on the improvement of drought tolerance in both maize and teff, while simultaneously exploring the potential for transferring species-specific drought-responsive features. This also includes developing ‘plant biostimulants’ that sustainably derive from living organisms, such as seaweed and algae. 

The BOOSTER project will comprise two synergistic strategies to achieve its goals. Firstly, a new approach will identify genomic variants in regulatory regions functionally associated with drought tolerance. Secondly, novel ‘Molecular Priming’ technologies from seaweed and microbial-based biostimulants will be developed by BioAtlantis, as an eco-friendly approach for improving drought resilience, thus showcasing the value and importance of BOOSTER to the algae sector and agri-sustainability in the EU. These two strategies will be tested in two kinds of cereals with different degrees of responsiveness to drought: European maize and Ethiopian teff – a cereal with a high genetic similarity to the desiccation-tolerant sister species Eragrostis nindensis. 

BOOSTER brings together a highly qualified team represented by European and international (USA, South Africa, Ethiopia) academics and industry to collectively ensure that the expected impacts are achieved in the near future.