From 19 to 21 February 2025, partners of the COUSIN project gathered in Catania, Sicily, for the first General Assembly. The three-day meeting combined project management sessions, scientific workshops, stakeholder engagement and discussions on future directions.

The event opened with a presentation of the PRO-WILD project (https://www.pro-wild.eu/index.html) by Jacques Le Gouis (INRAE), highlighting opportunities for collaboration on crops such as wheat, sugar beet and oil seed rape.

Updates followed on WP7 (Project coordination and management), addressing deliverables, milestones, reporting and the upcoming mid-term review. Another part of the meeting focused on the progress made in WP1 (Co-creating the contexts for CWR), WP2 (Monitoring and Conservation of CWR), WP3 (Trait characterization of CWRs and pre-breeding germplasm) and WP4 (Implementing CWRs in breeding and farming).

Dedicated crop workshops were held on pea, lettuce, brassica, wheat and barley, covering topics from trait characterization to participatory plant breeding and seed needs.

The assembly also reviewed advancements in WP5 (Data Management) and WP6 (Communication, Dissemination, Exploitation and Training), with planned outputs such as practice abstracts, training activities, videos, podcasts and field events.

Stakeholder engagement (such as farmers and gardeners, breeding and seed companies, scientists, other Horizon and Life projects, local public authorities, and seed-saving networks) was a central theme, with the Stakeholder Advisory Group (SAG) providing feedback and guiding discussions. The meeting concluded with a Steering Group session, addressing legal aspects such as Material Transfer Agreements (MTAs), data standardisation, collaboration with PRO-WILD, and preparations for the next in-person General Assembly, foreseen in May 2026 in Italy.

In the end, a field visit was organized to see Brassica Crop Wild Relatives on the hills around Taormina (Castelmola village).