Special Jury Prize at the 8th annual "Les Etoiles de Europe" ceremony for the H2020 GenTree project

Les Etoiles de l'Europe is a French award that each year honours small and large EU projects coordinated by French institutions as an encouragement for scientists to lead EU-funded collaborative research efforts.
GenTree was recognized for its scientific excellence, its European dimension and its great societal impact, tackling issues that are strategic for generations to come, such as the resilience of forest ecosystems and their underpinning genetic diversity.
Taking stock of several decades of research and collaboration on forest genetic resources, GenTree paved the European way on how this raw material of life can be used to improve sustainable forest management under global warming and changing societal expectations.
The resources produced during the four years of the project on twelve major European forest tree species include (1) large and small scale genomic data, (2) a series of databases on tree rings, leaf and whole-tree phenotypic traits, and forest ecology and dynamics, and (3) a catalogue of policies affecting genetic diversity.
These resources will be used for years to come and will contribute significantly to further investigate the complex and only partly understood mechanisms that enable adaptation to take place in tree species, which is a question of critical importance for management.