Eco2Wine Project Meeting 2024

The second project meeting of the Eco2Wine consortium took place in Stellenbosch, South Africa, on 4 & 5 October 2024. Most supervisors and doctoral candidates attended the meeting in person, with a few joining online.

Almost one year after the project was launched on 1 December 2023, beneficiaries were able to report on progress to date and plan future activities and collaborations. The meeting agenda kicked off with detailed administrative and financial planning, which allowed team members to discuss the milestones and deliverables of each of the project’s work packages and the shared platforms that would be used to ensure that the project stays on track. Planning for effective communication, dissemination, and exploitation was included in line with the requirements of Horizon Europe funding.

The involvement of the ten doctoral candidates was a vital feature of the meeting. Each candidate had an opportunity to present a research plan and their secondments in partner countries, and all supervisors had a chance to respond. It provided an excellent opportunity for students to explore possibilities for collaboration and sharing regarding their methodologies, research tools and the data they plan to collect. While the supervisors were impressed by the quality of the research plans, Prof Florian Bauer cautioned the young researchers to be realistic about what could be achieved in three years and scale down some ambitious projects. Prof Ileana Vigentini, Eco2Wine coordinator and project leader, emphasized the importance of meaningfully integrating all the doctoral candidates’ activities across all the project work packages.