NEWS


NEWS SEP24 photo
September 2024
ADAPTING NATURE: THE REVOLUTIONARY JOURNEY OF FRANCISCO’S POLLINATOR-ASSISTED BREEDING PROJECT
The story behind the DARkWIN project is now available on the Deepsync.eu platform. This article tells how Prof. Dr. Francisco Pérez Alfocea came up with the idea of using pollinators and how he implemented it.
Read the whole article on Deepsync.eu!
By Caterina Falcinelli

NEWS JUN24 photo
June 2024
DARkWIN PLATFORM: BUMBLEBEES USED TO SELECT PLANTS ADAPTED TO CLIMATE CHANGE
DARkWIN is a pollinator-assisted plant selection and phenotyping platform. Phenotyping and selection of floral traits is key to ensure food production by increasing plant resilience and animal pollination.
Read more here!
By Alicia Namesny (Tecnología Hortícola)

NEWS MAY24 photo
May 2024
SCIENCE AND INNOVATION ADVANCE IN THE REGION ON THE BACK OF EUROPEAN FUNDS
Francisco Pérez-Alfocea and his research group are trying to identify which varieties of tomato plants will be better able to withstand climate change. To do this, they are subjecting these plants to water and heat stress conditions (low watering and high temperatures), and monitoring the interaction between these tomato plants and pollinating insects (bumblebees).
Read more here!
By Javier Pérez Parra (La Verdad)

NEWS MAY24(2) photo
May 2024
DEEPSYNC.EU DARkWIN
Darkwin is already on Deepsync, a dynamic platform for increasing the impact of EIC Community projects, fostering collaboration, showcasing innovations and connecting stakeholders from across the deep tech ecosystem. Visit Deepsync.eu and learn the story behind the DARkWIN Project: “Tracking pollinator preferences in heat/drought-exposed tomato plants for resilience traits”.

NEWS APR24 photo
April 2024
RFID TECHNOLOGY TO TRACK BUMBLEBEES IS NOW READY
Within the framework of the DARkWIN Project, the deployment of the bumblebee RFID geo-localisation system developed by the LOPSI Group of the CAR-CSIC is now ready. We want to find out what are the pollination preferences of bumblebees on flowering tomato plants under climate change conditions.

NEWS MAR24 photo
March 2024
CONNECTING YOUNG PEOPLE TO SCIENCE
As students, we all went through the uncertainty of not knowing what you want to do when you “grow up”. DARkWIN staff held a workshop in four different schools in Murcia (Spain) for students between 8 and 16 years of age. They were able to communicate the aim of the project, and showed the small greenhouse prototype. The youngsters had a lot of fun!

NEWS MAR24 (2) photo
March 2024
WE HAVE A NEW HOME!
In 2024 a greenhouse with more than 1,000 ha of land was built on the Santomera experimental field in Murcia (Spain). As designed in WP2, six different modules have been created to host more than 1200 plants for the proposed trial. This task was carried out by the company NOVAGRIC.

NEWS SEP23 photo
September 2023
KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER BETWEEN PARTNERS: SPAIN AND GERMANY
We are very grateful for the collaboration between Centro de Edafología y Biología Aplicada del Segura (CEBAS-CSIC) and Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology with the European Project DARkWIN. Our PhD student Maialen Ormazabal Oria spent 3 months carrying out metabolomic studies of tomatoes with GC-MS, under the supervision of Dr. Guillaume Decros, in the group of Prof. Dr. Alisdair Fernie thanks to an iMOVE2023 scholarship.

NEWS APR24(2) photo
April 2024
HOW BUMBLEBEES SUPPORT SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE?
Did you know Bumblebees detect the chemical signature of stress tolerant plants? What a windfall for sustainable agriculture: Pollinators can help select varieties adapted to low input farming, and create crops that produce more with less! They join their forces to identify crops with good stress tolerance… and potentially to develop new varieties of tomatoes for sustainable farming!
Read more here!
By Romain Royer (Doriane)

NEWS MAR23(2) photo
March 2023
A PROJECT WILL TRACK POLLINATOR PREFERENCES TO SELECT MORE RESISTANT PLANTS
DARkWIN will track the preferences of bumblebees (which will be followed by radio frequency) to guide natural selection and plant breeding. They will do this in an experimental crop, exposed to heat and drought, and using Living IoT technology.
Read more here!
By R+D CSIC

NEWS MAR23(2) photo
March 2023
LAUNCHES A PROJECT TO IMPROVE CROPS IN THE FACE OF CLIMATE CHANGE
The innovation lies in the formula chosen to achieve their objective, as researchers at CEBAS are trying to get the bumblebees to choose the crop varieties most likely to be successful.
Read more here!
By Paco Martínez (Onda Regional de Murcia)

NEWS FEB23 photo
February 2023
CEBAS-CSIC LEADS A EUROPEAN PROJECT FOR CROP IMPROVEMENT IN THE FACE OF CLIMATE CHANGE, BASED ON THE NATURAL SELECTION OF PLANTS THROUGH POLLINATING INSECTS
Read more here!
By Cartagena Actualidad

NEWS FEB23(2) photo
February 2023
CEBAS-CSIC LEADS A PROJECT TO IMPROVE CROPS IN THE FACE OF CLIMATE CHANGE BASED ON THE NATURAL SELECTION OF PLANTS
The Centro de Edafología y Biología Aplicada del Segura (CEBAS-CSIC) is leading a European project to improve crops in the face of climate change based on the natural selection of plants through pollinating insects.
Read more here!
By Europa Press

NEWS FEB23(3) photo
February 2023
A ‘MURCIAN’ PROJECT SEEKS TO IMPROVE CROPS IN THE FACE OF CLIMATE CHANGE WITH NATURAL PLANT SELECTION
The project, called 'DARkWIN', combines electronic and robotic techniques, greenhouse technologies, crop physiology, agroecology, entomology, metabolomics, transcriptomics, bioinformatics and genetics.
Read more here!
By Murcia Plaza