3rd GoordBerry progress meeting in Aachen

Catching the first rays of spring sunlight, the GoodBerry consortium gathered at the RWTH Aachen from March 20-22 for a fruitful 3rd progress meeting.

During day 1 the discussions were centered on the scientific work progress and upcoming tasks in the remaining year of the project which will focus on the collection of samples from the last growing season and the major task of analyzing all data gathered throughout the GoodBerry project. The ongoing work on genetic data analysis has been lively discussed, especially first results on genotype-environment interactions, as well as a common strategy for the identification of candidate genes. Furthermore, joint scientific publications are planned that will present first results on fruit quality impact from the analysis of the metabolic data.

The scientific discussions were complemented by workshops on day 2 focusing on dissemination and exploitation of results. While first project results have already been intensively disseminated, strategies have been discussed for further results to come. Successful dissemination is on the one hand targeting the scientific community with presentations at scientific conferences and publications in scientific journals, and on the other hand the breeding and growing communities all over Europe. To ensure the uptake of results in the berry industry, practice abstracts are being prepared for the EIP AGRI platform, and our website is experiencing a make-over to include more dedicated communication and practice recommendations. Furthermore we discussed possibilities to publish in growers magazines and to join dedicated fares and events. Our special thanks go out to our new advisory board member Richard Harnden from Berry Gardens who brought his valuable input to the discussions, especially regarding the effectiveness of dissemination to the growers’ community.

The annual meeting was followed by an internal RNA sequencing workshop organized by Björn Usadel which was an excellent opportunity for 16 of us to dive into the theory of RNAseq and receive practical recommendations for sequencing, gene mapping and data analysis.