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The Governing Board decided that durable integration of the Network will be carried as a new research programme within the European Forestry Institute (EFI).
The decision has been made during the 4th and last Annual Meeting in San Lorenzo (Spain). The presentations from the Annual Meeting can be downloaded here.
The following networking activities will be maintained and supported by either cash or in kind contributions of the EVOLTREE partners, regardless of any support through EU projects:
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Maintenance and upgrading of EVOLTREE Portal and electronic resources (various data bases and eLab)
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Maintenance and access to common infrastructures and resources that were installed during the EU support: The infrastructures comprise the Repository Centre of genomic resources, the Intensive Study Sites (ISS) and the high throughput genotyping facilities
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Dissemination (production of newsletters and others dissemination products)
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Training (organisation of 4 to 6 summer schools or workshops per year)
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Coordination of activities
It was also agreed at the Governing Board meeting that there will be different levels of membership based on a governance model to allow for the different levels of financial and in-kind contribution that each partner is able and willing to invest in this self-funding phase.
Research activities per se will be continued only if funds for collaborative projects are available (either FP7 or FP8 projects, ERA-NETs or other international funding opportunities). This is the case for example for NOVELTREE, ENERGYPOPLAR, LINKTREE which are ongoing FP7 EU projects gathering several EVOLTREE partners. Six EVOLTREE partners are currently involved in a Supporting Action within FP7 called FORESTTRAC, which aims at building the roadmap for a future collaborative research project linking North American and European countries regarding "Adaptation of North temperate forests to climate change". The road is therefore already paved for future research in the field of forest ecosystem genomics. Furthermore, research topics on forest genetic resources with application of genomic tools will be launched in future work programmes of FP7 Knowledge-based Bio-economy. Linkages and complementarities between all research efforts using genomic tools in forestry will be essential.
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