OPTIMA - Cultivating grasses to save the planet!

In a time of climate change, when fuel resources are under pressure and lands face potential erosion risks, humble grass seems an unlikely saviour. The European research project OPTIMA is helping cultivate high-yielding perennial grasses that could address these possible challenges, offering a number of valuable environmental and economic benefits. The concept and ultimate objective of the OPTIMA project is to identify high-yielding perennial grasses for the Mediterranean area, within optimised production chain that will provide stable source for both biomass and new plant derived bio-products. Moreover, OPTIMA explores the potentialities of perennial grasses on under-utilised or abandoned marginal lands. An interdisciplinary approach involving physiology, biotechnology, agronomy, socio-economic and environmental analysis at different scale levels undertaken with the aim at tackling specific bottlenecks of perennial grasses in the Mediterranean area and creating alternative end-use chains.