About Us

LEAF promotes a balanced combination of research on basic disciplines and applied sciences contributing to the high quality and sustainable Agro-Food value chain. Our research is planned within the frame of four complementary Research Groups, each representing a main scientific area, which will form the backbone of the research strategy. The flags of LEAF are five Thematic Lines (TLs), interconnecting different scientific areas and skills from the research groups, thus promoting synergies within and beyond LEAF. These TLs address relevant issues (Grapevine & Wine; Olive & Olive Oil; Agro-Food Innovation, Green & Blue Infrastructures and Climate Change & Resource Scarcity) where LEAF can excel beyond any other existing research unit in Portugal. Within each Group, specific activities on cutting-edge topics will be maintained and when appropriate results will lead to new products or processes and progressively into more comprehensive and inclusive programmes. Thus, the TLs are not static, but dynamic, allowing adjustments according to research results and interactions with stakeholders.
Our main research goals are:

• to seek an integrated strategy to maintain crop biodiversity in cultivated landscapes with evaluation and characterization of biodiversity within crops (fruits, grapevine, vegetables and cereals) and wild species, in which Portugal is exceptionally rich;
• to apply conservation strategies which anticipate shifts on both critical and endangered plants and habitats;
• to manage Green & Blue infrastructures to sustain ecosystem functions;
• to contribute to a sustainable agriculture, with an emphasis on the quality and best management of soils and water, and on the efficient use of organic by-products from industry and municipalities to support recycling of carbon and plant nutrients, as soil amendments or to produce bio-energy;
• to unravel gene networks and mechanisms that coordinately act to determine tolerance or sensitivity to biotic and abiotic stress conditions at the whole-plant level, in order to evaluate crops plasticity in relation to yield and quality;
• to improve crop and pest management practices for sustainable crop production;
• to develop new processes in food production in order to obtain novel foods, functional foods and products which are healthy, convenient, safe, economic, sensory acceptable, and with extended shelf-life as well as safe and healthy animal products that minimize environmental impacts; the use of functional ingredients in daily food and feed diets is an important strategy to reduce the expenditure on medical care (e.g. five a day program; French paradox; Mediterranean diet);
• to create future agro-food value chains of selected clusters with a strong potential in the Portuguese economy, and model agricultural products and derived food matrices;
• to develop multidisciplinary research on the adaptation of agriculture to Climate Change & Resource Scarcity and contribute to mitigate their impacts.