CRAG obtains a €300,000 aid fund for the acquisition of scientific and technical equipment

The resolution of the 2015 call for Aid to infrastructures and scientific and technical equipment of the State Subprogram of scientific and technical infrastructures and equipment of the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness has granted €300,000 to the Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CRAG). Through this economic support, co-financed with resources from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the CRAG will be able to expand and update its plant growth facilities.

Although CRAG’s premises are relatively new, from 2011, the two applications submitted by the Centre pursue the need to improve the plant growth infrastructures , most of which come from the previous buildings of the institutions that form the CRAG consortium (CSIC-IRTA-UAB-UB), and are approaching the end of their lifecycle. Endowed with €235,000, one of the projects (CSIR15-EE-2877) aims to incorporate state-of-the-art equipment armed with LED technology, which will ensure plant cultivation in optimal environmental conditions and will allow significant energy savings.

In addition to the facilities inside the CRAG building, the Centre has large high-performance greenhouses that enable the cultivation of sizable plants of agro-economic interest. In this regard, the second project (CSIR15-EE-3594), with a €70,000 grant, intends to adapt these greenhouses to a biosafety level 1, which will greatly expand the scientific capacity of the CRAG, opening the door to more ambitious experimental approaches.

The resolution of the call proves that the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness values the submitted projects and the work done at the Centre, noting the quality of its activity. Through the granted aid, the CRAG will have a first-class scientific equipment in accordance with the research carried out in it.