The 4th project meeting of AGFORISE Project which consists of Turkish, Italian and Spanish partners was held in Mersin, Turkey on the 14th and 15th of June 2010. AGFORISE project aims to build AgroFood clusters platform with common long-term Research and Innovation Strategy towards Economic growth and prosperity in these 3 countries.
AGFORISE Project is an FP7 project which has started in February 2009 and its first period will be completed in July 2010. The project aims to create a common dialogue platform and a joint action plan among the Agrofood clusters that will maximize capacity for research and benefit from research infrastructure through complementariness and synergy, so as to contribute for sustainable development, prosperity, economic growth and global competitiveness of the regions. In the project progress meeting which was organized in Mersin project partners discussed the point reached in the project and what have been achieved so far and the way to go in the upcoming months.
Meeting which started after the welcome speech of Ahmet Zahteroğulları, AGFORISE project coordinator, took place in Mersin Special Provincial Administration Meeting Hall. Leyla Arsan, the CEO of TAGES, informed partners about the first year financial status of the project in the first part of her presentation. She explained the actual costs and expended efforts of each partner in detail. In the second part of her presentation, she informed partners about preparing the First Periodic Report and provided information on the reports she needs from each partner to prepare for the First Periodic Report and explained the introductions of the report and how to report financial statutes with the Form C.
Davut Keleş, from ALATA, Federica Rossi, from IBIMET and Boris Lefebvre, from Grupo TASO, shared their experiences gained in the food cluster visits in different regions as decided in the Bologna meeting to select a benchmark and organize a visit.
In WP3 it aims to develop a common dialogue platform between the participant regions for sharing information and experience in order to stimulate collaborative actions by facilitating and promoting sustainable joint strategies, to result in Joint Action Plan.Leda Bologni, from ASTER, informed the partners about the situation of WP3 and deliverables of WP3 and how the Joint Action Plan will be prepared.
In the afternoon a workshop for Joint Action Plan was organized and Leda Bologni, from ASTER, moderated the workshop. After that another workshop organized for Raising Collaboration of Industry and Researchers and Angel Martinez moderated the workshop. During the workshop on raising collaboration of industry and researchers, it is decided to select 5 or 6 topics for the next FP7 Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, and Biotechnology Calls which will be opened in July 2010 to collaborate and develop project ideas with other regions.
Second day meeting was held in Mersin Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Murat Kaplan, from Çukurova Development Agency, introduced the agency and he informed partners about Çukurova Region, investments, funds of ministry of agriculture, financial and technical support programmes etc. After this presentation Özlem Odabaşı, from Mersin Chamber of Commerce and Industry, made a presentation to introduce RIS-Mersin Agrofood-Platform which has been established on the 23rd June, 2007 as an output of the Project RIS (Regional Innovation Strategies) Mersin which is granted from 6th Framework of the European Union.
As the more excited part of the meeting, partners visited Mersin University Food Engineering Faculty. After a short presentation which introduces innovative food studies of Mersin University Food Engineering Faculty which are commercialized or patented, partners visited the laboratories. The next station of the partners became ALATA Horticultural Research Institute. Partners visited laboratories and green houses in ALATA.
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