ERA-PG Call 2006
Structuring Plant Genomic Research in Europe

CALL FOR PRE-PROPOSALS

1 February 2006

Background

The ERA-NET Plant Genomics (ERA-PG) is a network of funding organisations from European countries and Israel. The coordination of the
network is supported by the European Commission under the ERA-NET scheme of the 6th Framework Programme to strengthen the European Research Area.

ERA-PG was established in January 2004 by twelve funding organisations. The network has the ambition to further structure and integrate national plant genomics programmes in order to reduce fragmentation of research efforts and realise scientific excellence through real transnational collaboration, integration and synergy. In 2005 five more funding organisations joined ERA-PG. The network is coordinated by NGI/NWO, The Netherlands.

It is now in the remit of ERA-PG to continue this coordination and cooperation by implementing a joint call. The ultimate goal of the network is to have a fully integrated European plant genomics programme where all partners can participate on an equal footing.

Objective

The objective of the ERA-PG Call is to stimulate true collaboration between research teams of different countries in order to achieve the highest quality projects, to increase synergies between national programmes and to strengthen European competitiveness in plant genomics research.

Headline topics have been identified and are broad and inclusive, addressing common issues. It should be noted that scientific approaches should be genomic and/or post-genomic in nature and applications will not be considered where they primarily address the elucidation of function of single genes. A combination of various genomics and quantitative genetics tools should be employed. Within this framework there is the opportunity to emphasise specific activities in defined collaborations and in the context of two Sub Calls A and B.

Application

Who can apply

All European researchers working in the themes of the ERA-PG call and eligible to apply for financial support from the participating funding organisations are cordially invited to apply for funding. In addition to the general Call Notice, applicants should refer to the terms and conditions of their funding agencies. For this purpose each funding organisation attached a National Annex to the general ERA-PG Call Notice.

What can be applied for

A grant to meet all reasonable research costs, such as labour costs, material facilities (equipment, consumables, travel expenses etc.). The specific funding modalities per country are described in the National Annexes.

When can be applied

Due-date pre-proposals: 16th March 2006, 12.00 CET
Due-date full proposals: 29th June 2006, 12.00 CET

Selection

Procedure

There will be a two-stage application procedure; pre-proposals and full proposals; and accordingly a two-stage selection procedure.

Applicants are advised to read the Call Notice, their particular National Annex and/or contact their National Call Coordinator before starting to prepare an application.

Budget and Sponsors

The call is financially supported by twelve members of the ERA-PG network. These twelve funding organisations (of eleven countries), will jointly provide funds in the order of 30 million Euros (for individual organisation commitments please see National Annexes). Each national funding organisation will fund only the project partners from its own country. There is not a predefined maximum size of the research projects. Total costs of a typical project will be about € 1-2 M.

Other ERA-PG partners, not contributing to this first call, are the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Culture (BMBWK) in Austria, The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MOARD) in Israel, the Swedish Research Council (VR) and the Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (FORMAS) in Sweden, and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) in Switzerland.

Contacts

Call Secretariat:

• Paul Beckers,
phone 31 (0) 70 3440 874/ 517; beckers@genomics.nl.

National Call Coordinators:

• The list of National Call Coordinators of the participating countries is included in the Call Notice.

Documentation (links at the downloads page)

• ERA-PG Call Notice; this document (PDF) contains background and themes of the programme; description of call procedure; the evaluation criteria; timeline

• ANNEX I Guidelines for Pre-proposal Application

• ANNEX II IPR Conditions

• National Annexes to ERA-PG Call for Proposals; these documents contain the national regulations and funding modalities of the contributing organisations
Documentation for applying electronically

• ERA-PG Application Form (pre-proposal)

>> Go to IRIS Electronic Application Submission