Proposals should:

1. Identify and analyse optimised proteins, microorganisms, microbiomes, plants, and animals (specifically fish and molluscs/bivalves including mussels) for sediment, watershed and wastewater remediation and revitalization (e.g. novel enzymes to degrade xenobiotic small molecules such as toxins, antibiotics and microplastics, selective uptake of non-degradable metal toxins, bioadsortion);
2. Identify and characterise plant platforms, microorganisms and microbiomes that can be optimised for efficient remediation of a range of contaminated environments (e.g. enzymes optimised for efficient bioconversion and/or biosequestration of environmental contaminants, biological tools/systems for land-based bioremediation, phytoremediation for contaminated industrial sites);
3. Identify and characterise plants transformed with pathways and metabolisms that enable the uptake of targeted contaminants and that have clearly visible ‘markers’ for public surveillance (for example, colours that clearly mark the plant as being genetically modified, so as to prevent people from eating these plants);
4. Develop strategies for efficient metabolic pathways of naturally-occurring species to be re-introduced into the environment;
5. Develop sustainable and cost-effective technologies for bioremediation of water resources used for water production and effective in situations with mixed waste (e.g. nature-based solutions); and/or develop sustainable and cost-effective technologies for bioremediation of soil resources, including those effective in situations with mixed waste;
6. Enable new microbial approaches, such as combinations of synthetic auxotrophies, that increase the safety and reduce the risk of deploying optimised microbes in the field; etc. (in the work programme p. 331)