Agrotecnio and IRBLleida launch the third AgroHealth call for proposals

The Lleida-based CERCA centres, Agrotecnio and the Institut de Recerca Biomèdica de Lleida (IRBLleida), have launched the third joint call for AgroHealth 2026 research projects, focusing on Agriculture, Food, Nutrition and Health. This well-established initiative promotes collaborative projects funded through internal resources, integrating agro-food and biomedical research to advance health and well-being.

On Monday 25 May, Agrotecnio hosted a meeting at the ETSEAFIV campus. The event, which brought together more than 50 professionals, served to present the results of the previous edition and foster new synergies among research staff. The session also featured Núria Benítez, head of the strategic and open science area at CERCA, who highlighted the strategic value of interdisciplinarity within the Catalan scientific system.

This joint effort aligns with the guidelines of the World Health Organisation (WHO), which maintains that cooperation between the health and agricultural sectors is key to ensuring policy coherence and a supply of safe and nutritious food, thereby driving more sustainable economies and communities.

In this context, Agrotecnio and IRBLleida aim to extend the frontiers of knowledge through synergies ranging from agriculture in its broadest sense to biomedicine. Notable among their lines of work is the use of plants as production platforms for nutritional and pharmaceutical applications, the latter being oriented towards the study of infectious diseases such as HIV or SARS.

The 2026 call for proposals

As in previous editions, AgroHealth 2026 has a total budget of €135,000, destined to fund three proposals with a grant of €45,000 each. The selected initiatives, which will run for two years, must address unmet medical needs. To guarantee an interdisciplinary approach, each application must include at least one research group from Agrotecnio and another from IRBLleida, aiming to build alliances that endure over time.

Through this strategy, both Lleida CERCA centres not only seek to strengthen ties between their teams but also to facilitate their access to wider-reaching national and international calls. Regarding the requirements, applicants must hold a PhD, demonstrate a scientific or technical track record linked to the proposal, and be affiliated with -or have applied for affiliation to- either of the two promoting entities before the call deadline.

The deadline for submission of applications will remain open until 30 June, and the final decision is scheduled for December 2026. The projects will have a maximum duration of two years and will commence in January 2027. The terms and conditions, application form and other documents of interest can be consulted on the IRBLleida website.

The third edition of AgroHealth is launched following the success of the previous calls, held in 2022 and 2024. Currently, three projects are in their final stages, focusing on the study of the chemopreventive effects of barley, the development of rice-derived natural microbicides to combat infectious diseases, and the creation of edible nanostructures with antitumour activity.