The FoResTTraC project

FoResTTraC's main aim is to prepare future coordinated research plans, via a strategic research roadmap, between Europe and North America regarding adaptation of forest trees to climate changes, linking different disciplines: ecology, genetics, genomics and evolution.

FoResTTraC brings together a critical mass of research expertise in these disciplines on both sides of the Atlantic with 6 leading European partners, 3 American and 2 Canadian partners. For the time being, large scale genomics projects have been conducted in "parallel" between North America and Europe, lacking in cooperative exchanges and interactions. The leading institutions coordinating these projects are partners of FoResTTraC to ensure that the current state-of-art research is represented in the project.

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FoResTTraC will bring together the ongoing efforts of European and North American teams by focusing their attention to the most ecologically and economically important forest tree families on the two continents: Salicaceae, Fagaceae and Pinaceae.

FORESTTRAC gets thumbs up at Brussels meeting but funding challenges remain

The FORESTTRAC roadmap was well received and supported at the stakeholder event in Brussels on October 26th2011, where it was presented to a range of forest experts and to staff of the European Commission. EC representation included DG Research and Innovation and DG Agriculture. Most importantly, the discussions focused on how best to assemble future funding from both North America and Europe to take the roadmap forward to future research projects. This is a considerable challenge with such a wide range of funding mechanisms operating with different timetables and selection criteria. A major conclusion was that while scientists readily cooperate and collaborate across the Atlantic, agreeing to share their resources, infrastructure and knowledge to tackle big issues such as climate change, this is currently not the case in funding.

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The FoResTTraC strategic research roadmap was build during a series of workshops that lead to a white paper respectively. The workshops took place in Europe, USA and Canada.

A summary of the workshops can be found here:

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