HaloFarMs will develop and optimize new sustainable farming systems for the Mediterranean region based on the smart use of halophyte plants to value degraded and unexploited salt-affected lands. These systems will ultimately cope with soil and water salinization. The project involves a multidisciplinary and intersectorial R&D team, including agronomists, biologists, engineers, chemists, environment experts, biotechnologists, veterinarians economists and social actors and stakeholders from Tunisia, Spain, Egypt, Portugal, France and Italy. HaloFarMs will optimize 1) desalination of saline soils by halophytes prior to crop cultivation, 2) intercropping halophytes on salt-affected soils, with important commercial cultivated crops, and 2) in vitro cultivation of halophytes. The produced halophytes will be biochemically characterized for nutritional profile and functional properties; these high added-value products can be used in the cosmetic, food and veterinary industries. HaloFarMs is particularly relevant to this call since it aims to leverage the challenges of the Mediterranean agriculture by offering Naure Based Solutions to stop the soil degradation or convert poorly valued lands, diversify the cultures with a set of traditional food crops, traditional cash crops and new high-value crops, and contribute to preserve biodiversity and natural resources in the Mediterranean area. The adoption by farmers of HaloFarMs findings, thanks to our NGO and governmental advisors partners, will decrease soil salinization, increase yields without depleting fresh water resources and diversify the sources of income. This will thus reduce environmental risk on farming ecosystems, increase the viability of farms and secure the incomes of workers in a socially and ecologically acceptable way.

The overall objective of NICE is to widen the availability of enhanced Natural Based Solutions (NBS) to provide circular urban water solutions. NICE will provide key knowledge for the design and implementation of NBS, closing urban water loops. Solutions will make available reusable water for different purposes, in addition to mitigating pollution and runoff and constituting an attractive and integral part of the urban landscape. NICE strategy will be based on the comprehensive study of existing NBS together with the R&D at lab and the validation at Urban Real Labs (11 URLs and 4 Fellow Sites in 5 EU countries and 2 international locations) of innovative NBS covering the urban water cycle (wastewater, greywater, river basins, stormwater & combined sewer overflow).High-potential technologies such as green walls, vegetated rooftops, rain gardens & hybrid subsurface wetlands will be studied and enhanced with especially tailored bioaugmentation strategies, reactive materials & other filling media, novel design & plants, obtaining highly innovative and efficient urban water NBS. The overall approach encompasses the integration of research, citizens, policy and the economic sector to provide the knowledge-base for the integration of the NBS in the real context, covering technical, geographic, social, economic and cultural variety: • Enable the scaling up NBS across EU by development of guidelines, standards and methodologies. A deep review of the existing innovative urban NBS in EU and beyond as well as the creation and implementation of URLs will be carried out. • New business and investment models to maximize the co-effectiveness and co-benefits for the environment, economy and society in urban landscapes of the development and deploy of NBS solutions. • Identify obstacles, barriers and opportunities for the current regulatory framework to support the integration of the NBS in the urban landscape and the use of the effluents for reuse in different uses. • Raising citizen´s awareness and engagement by involving local citizens, authorities, other NBS projects, etc. in the co-creation of the URLs.