Representatives of industry, academic institutions, and business clusters from six countries visited CPSBB.

Representatives of industry, academic institutions, and business clusters from Bulgaria, Portugal, Spain, Slovenia, Finland and Sweden visited CPSBB at the invitation of AgroHUB.BG and within the framework of the RISE I3 project “Resilient Innovation Ecosystems for EU Value Chains”. The project involves assessing innovation ecosystems in underdeveloped regions against European standards, identifying development opportunities, and creating localized roadmaps to foster collaboration between local, regional, and international stakeholders. It also includes organizing networking events for SMEs, forming innovation consortia, selecting projects for financing, and proposing policy recommendations based on the outcomes.

The Director of CPSBB, Prof. Dr. Tsanko Gechev, welcomed the guests and introduced them to the main fundamental and applied scientific research at CPSBB, as well as the sustainable development of the institute, supported by the Executive Agency “Program for Education” under the Program “Research, Innovation and Digitalization for Intelligent Transformation” (PRIDST).

The presentation focused on some of the services offered by CPSBB in the field of metabolomics and bioinformatics. Prof. Gechev also highlighted the development of new varieties of vegetable crops with improved nutritional qualities and tolerance to abiotic stress, scientific developments for the benefit of the cosmetics industry and human health, priming technologies for sustainable agriculture, etc. Some results from studies with agricultural crops under the BioCrops, BOOSTER and HealthyDiets4Africa projects were also presented.

During the visit, the guests had the opportunity to get acquainted with the research complex of CPSBB where Prof. Gechev and Dr. Nikola Staykov demonstrated some of the technologies for metabolomic and mass spectrometric analyses, as well as the specialized rooms for plant growth. The scientists presented the resurrection plant Haberlea rhodopensis (the so-called “Orpheus flower”) and the utility model of CPSBB for in vitro propagation of the protected plant in laboratory conditions. The utility model of propagation provides increased content of myconoside – a valuable substance with applications in the cosmetics industry due to its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.