Newsletter 5 – Final workshop (15th December 2015, Metaponto, Italy)

The aim of the project Biogreen was to acquire significant experiences through a comparison and exchange among qualified partners, in order to develop and implement Good Practices for a governance model of the Polo of Green Biotechnology in Basilicata. To close this project, the Partner 1 (ALSIA–Metapontum Agrobios Research Center) organized a final workshop supplemented with demonstrative activities. Representatives of the BIOIB and the PTP (Mariela Adrover, Tanit Mir, Dr. Hipólito Medrano, and Andrea Vallan) were invited to visit research centres and enterprises, which could take part of the Polo Biotech in Basilicata, as well as to follow some presentations about the scientific partners of the Cluster Biogreen.

15^th December 2015 – Final workshop

On the second day, the meeting continued by a final workshop at the conference room of ALSIA-CRMA. At first, Domenico Tataranno (Mayor of Bernalda) and Prof. Michele Perniola (Director of the School of Agricultural, Forest, Food and Environmental Sciences, University of Basilicata) welcomed the audience, then Dr. Francesco Cellini (Director of ALSIA-CRMA) introduced the project Biogreen and the ALSIA-CRMA.

In order to construct together public and private entities, technological infrastructures, competence, human capital, and financial resources concentrated in the region Basilicata, representatives of the present research institutes signed the “Protocol Agreement between Research Institutes of the Region Basilicata aimed at creating by the Operational Thematic Group (GTO) of Bio-Economy”.

The first section of the workshop was consisted of the description of Good Practices of the cluster BIOIB (Palma de Mallorca, Spain) by Mariela Adrover (Cluster Manager of BIOIB) and Dr. Hipólito Medrano (Prof. at the University of the Balearic Islands).

In the second section of the workshop the Good Practices of the CAT.AL – PTP were presented by Fabrizio Trigila (PTP Business Incubator Project Manager) and Andrea Vallan (Cluster Manager), and then Olivia Postorino (Director of the Organization Unit of Managing Authorities POR FESR 2014-2020) described the ‟Instrument of the collaborative platform of Open Innovation”. Thereafter, some enterprises of the cluster were introduced by Roberto Verga (CEO of BiCT s.r.l.), Alessanrdo Vitale (Business Development Manager of IPADLAB s.r.l.), and Giuliana D’Imporzano (Facility Manager of the RICICLA Group) via video conference.

Afterwards, representatives of the scientific partners of the cluster Biogreen performed some presentations. Prof. Bartolo Dichio introduced several research activities of the University of Basilicata, and then Dr. Domenico Pignone (Director of the National Research Council – Department of Bio-Agrifood Sciences) spoke about the CNR-DiSPBA and a project dedicated to plant phenomics in collaboration with the ALSIA-CRMA. Later, Francesco Montemurro gave a brief overview about the activities of the CREA-SCA and the importance of organic agriculture. As representative of zoo technology, Dr. Salvatore Claps (Director of the Research Unit for the Extensive Animal Husbandry) described the main research topics of the CREA-ZOE. By the end of the conference, Isabella De Bari spoke about the ENEA’s technologies platform for biorefineries and green chemistry.