Research Projects

Promoting sustainable agriculture for pollinators: Biotechnical faculty joins the EU project AGRI4POL

The new Horizon project is to assist the transition of agriculture to a positive force for biodiversity, crop pollination services, ecosystems and people. Biotechnical faculty will be involved in creating a multi-actor approach to the challenge and will conduct research on farmers' willingness to pay for pollination services and consumer preferences for pollinator-friendly products. Additionally, we will also contribute to analysis of policies related to pollinators in the EU.

Threats to pollinators and pollination services that support agriculture and provide benefits to people are a worldwide problem, recognized by intergovernmental scientific assessments, national or transnational initiatives as well as policies.

Intensive agriculture is among the principal threats to pollinator biodiversity and the crop pollination services that pollinators provide. Moreover, typically crop breeding has tended to overlook the benefits of pollination for sustained crop yields in favour of other crop traits.

Coordinated by Dr. Adam Vanbergen (External link to INRAE Open in new window) and funded by Horizon Europe, the AGRI4POL project takes an ambitious and achievable interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach to achieve a transition towards sustainable pollinator-friendly farming.

The project aims to deliver an integrated state-of-the-art analysis of the crop – farming system – pollinator interplay across levels of biological organisation from the crop gene to the agroecosystem. 

AGRI4POL launched in January 2025 and will be running until the end of 2028.

To achieve its goals, AGRI4POL project has outlined six objectives:

1. Establish and work with a multi-actor community to drive the transition towards more pollinator friendly farming systems and value chains.
2. Evaluate genetic diversity of crop floral traits governing pollinator interactions to stimulate breeding of pollinator-smart varieties.
3. Find out how pollinator-crop relationships are modified by intra- and interspecific crop diversification in space and time.
4. Optimise ecological infrastructures (EI = landscape features, non-crop habitats) for crop pollination, pollinator biodiversity and multiple ecosystem benefits.
5. Assess the social, economic and environmental opportunities and obstacles presented by pollinator friendly farming options to understand their feasibility and acceptability. 
6. Evaluate the influence of the policy landscape and the practitioner awareness of the benefits and challenges of pollinator-friendly farming at [sub]national, European and international scales.