Advancing organic and low-input food. QLIF Integrated Research Project

Summary

The Integrated Project “Improving quality and safety and reduction of costs in the European organic and low input supply chains” (QLIF) was funded by the European Commission under the 6th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development. QLIF started in 2004 with 31 scientific and industry partners and supplemented the consortium with another five partners via open calls. The total budget was 18 million € of which the European Commission contributed 12.4 million €. The duration of the project was five years. The scope of QLIF was on quality and safety of organic and low-input foods in the context of cost efficiency and sound environments. Sixty-one work packages provided conclusive answers based on comprehensive analyses from scientific experiments, socio-economic data and complex modelling. The work was organized in 7 subprojects with interdependent aims. Here an outline is given on what the Integrated Project QLIF has achieved and what challenges remain. Individual subproject folders provide a further insight to the outcomes and a substantial amount of QLIF publications are available in the open access database Organic Eprints.