Flagship Themes

Discussions during 2004/2005 have established criteria to define Flagship themes that represent important areas for new international R&D activities.

Those criteria are:

• User/consumer benefit: Demonstrable societal benefit across the entire supply chain.
• Scientific challenge: Research requires large-scale, complementary multinational input to overcome current bottlenecks to the development of next generation bioproducts.
• Economic benefits and risk analysis: Analysis of each project and product as a continuum – from research to proof-of-concept and eventual market.
• Private sector involvement: Pre-competitive research with clear demonstration of value and commitment to supply products to the market place 10-15 years from now.

The new Flagship themes are to be developed in field-based and fermenter applications, often involving multi-disciplinary teams and building on advances in plant and microbial sciences and their associated technologies. The first flagships to be identified are:

• Plant cell walls in relation to biorefining
• Plant oils as industrial feedstocks
• Biopolymers

Significantly, the international community is invited to work with EPOBIO to identify additional Flagship themes for future development.