FNS-Cloud will overcome fragmentation problems by integrating existing FNS data, which is essential for high-end, pan- European FNS research, addressing FNS, diet, health, and consumer behaviours as well as on sustainable agriculture and the bio-economy. Current fragmented FNS resources not only result in knowledge gaps that inhibit public health and agricultural policy, and the food industry from developing effective solutions, making production sustainable and consumption healthier, but also do not enable exploitation of FNS knowledge for the benefit of European citizens. FNS-Cloud will, through three Demonstrators; Agri-Food, Nutrition & Lifestyle and NCDs & the Microbiome to facilitate:
- Analyses of regional and country-specific differences in diet including nutrition, (epi)genetics, microbiota, consumer behaviours, culture and lifestyle and their effects on health (obesity, NCDs, ethnic and traditional foods), which are essential for public health and agri-food and health policies;
- Improved understanding agricultural differences within Europe and what these means in terms of creating a sustainable, resilient food systems for healthy diets; and
- Clear definitions of boundaries and how these affect the compositions of foods and consumer choices and, ultimately, personal and public health in the future.
Long-term sustainability of the FNS-Cloud will be based on Services that have the capacity to link with new resources and enable cross-talk amongst them; access to FNS-Cloud data will be open access, underpinned by FAIR principles (findable, accessible, interoperable and re-useable). FNS-Cloud will work closely with the proposed Food, Nutrition and Health Research Infrastructure (FNHRI) as well as METROFOOD-RI and other existing ESFRI RIs (e.g. ELIXIR, ECRIN) in which several FNS-Cloud Beneficiaries are involved directly.