The kick-off meeting of the Green ERA-Hub took take place in Ghent (Belgium), on the 15th and 16th of September 2022.

The Kick-off meeting was opened by the coordinator Ulrike Ziegler and marked the start of the 4 year Green ERA-Hub project on co-operation  of 15 initiatives within Agroecology, food and Biotechnology sector. Aim of the GEH is to continue and extend already existing collaborations, specially also widening in terms of geographical coverage, as well as identifying new research and innovation priorities, resulting in supporting and complement to coming HEU partnerships with the overall objective to contribute to achieve the strategic goals of the SDGs.

The Kick off meeting took place during the celebration of the 90th anniversary of ILVO, thus the Kick off meeting was complemented by 2 inspiring keynote speakers from ILVO and The Scientific director Marc Heyndrickx welcomed everyone at Flanders Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (ILVO) and gave an inspiring speech about ILVO and their 4 research units (Plant, Animal, Technology & Food and social sciences. ILVO's research vision defines 8 priority research themes, together with the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, these themes direct the research and investments made at ILVO. And we have been listening to a very informative and interesting talk presentation from Els Lemeire on the Expertise Centre for Agriculture & Climate (ILVO-ELK). ILVO-ELK aims to help policy and the sector respond adequately to climate challenges in the agricultural sector. Threats and opportunities are identified, translated into practice and the implementation of feasible climate measures is guided. In addition, we have been given a very nice introduction to the existing field experiments.

Furthermore, the keynote presentations from the European commission were very inspiring. Mihaela Williams (DG RTD) gave a very interesting talk about policy aspects within the framework of HEU. The presentation already indicated possible future perspectives of the GEH as partnership. Marta Truco-Calbet (REA) introduced all reporting obligations and communication pathways of the GEH and gave a nice overview on implementation of the GEH from a EC point of view.

In sum the Kick off meeting set a great start for a successful implementation of the planned work and its objectives.