The meeting lasted for three days. During the first two days, all project partners made presentations on the progress made under each work package. Every presentation followed by a discussion about the results and next steps.

Since the last meeting in October a number of important milestones were reached:

·        The first periodic report meeting on 23 March 2022 was positively evaluated by the European Commission with support of two external reviewers. All milestones were reached and all submitted deliverables were accepted.

·        The field trials in WP1 in Zeeland (Netherlands) and Valencia (Spain) run by Meijer and HZPC respectively are nicely progressing and will deliver highly valuable data this year due to the extreme weather conditions and the occurring heat and drought stress at both locations. A huge number of samples have been taken and were processed in the labs of CRAG in Barcelona with support of the James Hutton institute and the universities of Bonn and Vienna.

·        At he mechanistic level, the greenhouse experiments in WP2 delivered a large set of very detailed phenotypic-, physiological-, and biochemical data which is now analysed and will be compiled in a joint manuscript of the consortium. A follow-up experiment will be performed in spring 2023 at the PSI research facilities.

·       Using the different available tools in the consortium, also the mechanistic understanding of the regulation of the tuberization activation complex is progressing. Here, the close collaboration between the involved groups at CRAG, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), James Hutton Institute, Wageningen University and Research and University of Vienna enables the project to look into mechanistic details with newest technologies and to share available high-end infrastructure and newest technologies at the different partners.

·        Altogether, there is now a wealth molecular data available, which will feed into the modelling approaches led by the Slovenian National Institute of Biology with the support of the University of Vienna and the molecular sensor data generated by the University of Bonn and Durham University within WP4 to support the modelling approaches in WP5.

·       Last, but not least, the first field trials led by the AGES and NÖS in Austria have been started as well to confirm results from WP1 at different locations in the country in order to be able to link these also to mechanistic processes. A part of these trials was samples for molecular analysis by University of Vienna in July.

This meeting was also attended by two External Advisory Board members Onno Muller (FZ Jülich) and Daniel Ryckmans (NEPG). At the end of the meeting, both of them gave their feedback on the project implementation and gave some suggestions for the improvement.

This Network Meeting also included two visits. During the first one, partners visited the Plant Eco-phenotyping Centre (NPEC) at the Wageningen University and Research campus, which is a state-of-art plant phenotyping facility. The second visit took place in Zeeland where partners visited field trials which are conducted as part of the project by Meijer Potato.

For more information about the project and the latest news, please visit our website at adapt.univie.ac.at or follow us on Twitter @eu_adapt.