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Unlocking Europe’s plant genetic resources: EVA project delivers results
The final report of the first EVA project highlights six years of collaboration generating data to unlock genebank potential and strengthen Europe’s crop resilience and breeding innovation.
The final report of the first European Evaluation Network (EVA) project (2019–2025) is now available. The report offers a comprehensive account of six years of collaborative work to unlock the potential of plant genetic resources held in European genebanks.
European genebanks conserve more than two million accessions of plant genetic resources. Yet for most of these accessions, critical information on agronomic performance, quality traits and stress resistance remains scarce. EVA was established in 2019 precisely to bridge this gap, generating standardized phenotypic and genotypic evaluation data through crop-specific public–private partnerships to strengthen the link between conservation and use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture.
A network that grew beyond expectations
Funded by the German Federal Ministry for Agriculture, Food and Regional Identity (with additional support from the H2020 project AGENT for the network on wheat and barley), the project concluded in March 2025. By then, EVA had grown to 125 partner organizations (77 from the public and 48 from the private sector) operating across 37 countries.
Partners include genebanks, research institutes, universities, breeding companies of all sizes, and NGOs.
Key achievements
The project facilitated more than 450 experimental field and laboratory trials across six crop-specific networks – carrot, legumes, lettuce, maize, pepper, and wheat and barley – generating evaluation data on 5,566 European genebank accessions and over 630,000 individual data points.
Highlights include:
- Wheat and barley: Over 3,500 accessions evaluated across three European zones, with genotyping data for more than 1,222 barley, 1,264 soft wheat and 358 durum wheat accessions, and identified marker-trait associations for breeding.
- Maize: 612 accessions, 360 test crosses and 90 trials, focusing on phenological, morphological and agronomic traits as well as abiotic and biotic stresses; analyses revealed new genetic diversity and insights into maize introduction pathways into Europe, alongside promising germplasm for stress resistance.
- Carrot, lettuce, and pepper: Hundreds of vegetable accessions screened for agronomic performance, disease resistance and abiotic stress tolerance. Notable outputs include the development of a new SPET genotyping tool for lettuce, comparative genetic diversity approaches for carrot, and the identification of accessions resistant to various stresses in all vegetable crops.
- Legumes: Building on the framework of EVA, a new crop network was initiated in 2024, working on seven priority legume crops (beans, chickpeas, faba beans, lentils, lupins, peas and cowpeas) to boost European legume breeding, with additional funding from Germany.
An important objective of the EVA project was to enrich the existing data on the European Search Catalogue for Plant Genetic Resources (EURISCO) and to ensure that all accessions used in the evaluations are documented in EURISCO and included in the AEGIS European collection, where possible. In this regard, a dedicated data management platform – the EURISCO-EVA intranet – was developed to store, visualize and share phenotypic and genotypic data from multi-site evaluations.
The project has resulted in a significant increase in available characterization and evaluation (C&E) data in EURISCO, sourced from previous projects (primarily on wheat, barley and maize accessions). Furthermore, 40% of EVA accessions documented in EURISCO have been included in AEGIS, strengthening the long-term conservation and accessibility of European plant genetic resources.
Looking ahead
The project has met and exceeded expectations, successfully kickstarting the implementation of EVA, with follow-up projects funded by Germany (EVA Boost) or through the ECPGR Grant Scheme enabling continued collaboration of the six existing EVA networks. The EVA public–private partnership model has gained strong recognition and is widely viewed as effective by both public and private stakeholders. It has been adopted as part of the Plant Genetic Resources Strategy for Europe, referenced in key fora, and integrated into multiple projects. Building on this momentum, continued collaboration and dedicated funding mechanisms will be essential to sustain and expand the networks.
