Secrets to Success with Project Proposals

This CaSA booklet 5 is a development of a document “Secrets to success with FP7 REGPOT proposals”, written whilst working for the Serbian former Ministry of Science and Technological Development as the Director, Consultative Bureau for International Projects from 2008 to 2011. It was put together specifically to help Serbian scientists improve the quality of their proposals for the FP7 REGPOT scheme, which at that time was the most popular sub-programme of FP7 for Serbian scientists. This original document has been modified through the CaSA Tempus project to make it more general in its approach and philosophy for writing project proposals, though many of the examples come from the FP7 REGPOT sub-programme. The advice is based on experiences of reading proposal drafts written by Serbian scientists, discussions with them and evaluation summary reports (ESRs) for their submitted proposals, as well as on experiences working with academics in the CaSA project. In this project, courses in Academic Skills for university teachers of Serbian agricultural faculties were held in 2014, and these courses included preparation of project proposals. A CaSA questionnaire completed by participants for the Academic Skills courses showed that lack of skills in proposal writing was the second biggest obstacle (after lack of time) to writing project proposals. Thus, the original document has now been updated as part of the CaSA project to focus on Horizon 2020 (H2020). This will meet the needs of university teachers to have a written document based on the Academic Skills course for future reference. The approach of this document is to focus largely on the philosophy needed for success rather than just advice on how to fill in the application forms. It aims to help put the applicants within the minds of the proposal reviewers and the funding programme managers to ensure that what is written is what they want to read and not what the applicant wants to write! This guide accompanies the Balkan Security Network (www.balkansecurity.net) European Project Proposal (EPP) training course PowerPoint™ presentation ‘Excellence in EU Project Proposal Writing’, also available as a YouTube video at www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jSQU-_tdA4. I hope you find the “Secrets to success ....” useful

Getting it Across to your Stakeholders

Increasingly, research projects are expected to provide impact, and without a convincing impact statement, project proposals are now unlikely to get funding. This impact is not only for others in the scientific community, but also a wide range of stakeholders who are interested in knowing what a project has achieved. Getting it across to stakeholders can be achieved in terms of answers to the questions Why? Who? What? How? When? and Where? Why - because researchers are spending other people’s money and need to be accountable for this. Who - as well as other scientists, non-scientific stakeholder groups include industry and commerce, decision- and policy-makers, consumers and general public, as well as the media. What - in addition to traditional scientific presentations, for non-scientist stakeholders, emphasis should be on any practical applications of the research findings and relevance to perceived societal needs or problems. How - non-scientific stakeholders need a much more varied set of measures, beyond just scientific publications and presentations at conferences/symposia. Website, multimedia and social networks are now essential components of an effective dissemination strategy. When - regular events to describe progress with the research, such as press releases and newsletters should be combined with irregular meetings such as conferences, symposia, trade fairs and other stakeholder group meetings. Where - as well as events held at the researcher’s institution, other locations for dissemination activities should be planned locally, nationally and internationally, especially trade and industrial fairs. The increasing importance of research impact is resulting in many large-scale projects including partners with specific expertise in getting it across to stakeholders

WATER COMMUNITIES IN THE REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF MEMBERSHIP SATISFACTION AND PAYMENT BEHAVIOUR

The performance of Water Communities (WCs), a form of self-managing organisation for irrigation, in the Bregalnica region of the Republic of Macedonia is investigated. Analysis, drawing on primary survey data, focuses on the decision of farmers to join a WC (Heckman selection probit model), determinants of farmers’ satisfaction with their membership of WCs (ordered probit model) and factors associated with changes in farmers’ water payment behaviour (non-parametric CLAD model). Key determinants identified include transparency and trust with respect to the structure and operation of the WC, cost recovery rates, farm size and irrigation costs. Membership satisfaction is an important determinant of payment behaviour. Lessons for sustainable self-management are drawn.Irrigation, Self-management, Water User Associations, Eastern Europe, Macedonia,

Water Communities in the Republic of Macedonia: an empirical analysis of membership satisfaction and payment behaviour

The performance of Water Communities (WCs), a form of self-managing organisation for irrigation, in the Bregalnica region of the Republic of Macedonia is investigated. Analysis, drawing on primary survey data, focuses on the decision of farmers to join a WC (Heckman selection probit model), determinants of farmers’ satisfaction with their membership of WCs (ordered probit model) and factors associated with changes in farmers’ water payment behaviour (non-parametric CLAD model). Key determinants identified include transparency and trust with respect to the structure and operation of the WC, cost recovery rates, farm size and irrigation costs. Membership satisfaction is an important determinant of payment behaviour. Lessons for sustainable self-management are drawn.Irrigation, Self-management, Water User Associations, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Dissecting a wheat QTL for yield present in a range of environments: from the QTL to candidate genes

Previous studies with 95 bread wheat doubled haploid lines (DHLs) from the cross Chinese Spring (CS)xSQ1 trialled over 24 yearxtreatmentxlocations identified major yield quantitative trait loci (QTLs) in homoeologous locations on 7AL and 7BL, expressed mainly under stressed and non-stressed conditions, respectively. SQ1 and CS contributed alleles increasing yield on 7AL and 7BL, respectively. The yield component most strongly associated with these QTLs was grains per ear. Additional results which focus on the 7AL yield QTL are presented here. Trials monitoring agronomic, morphological, physiological, and anatomical traits revealed that the 7AL yield QTL was not associated with differences in flowering time or plant height, but with significant differences in biomass at maturity and anthesis, biomass per tiller, and biomass during tillering. In some trials, flag leaf chlorophyll content and leaf width at tillering were also associated with the QTL. Thus, it is likely that the yield gene(s) on 7AL affects plant productivity. Near-isogenic lines (NILs) for the 7AL yield QTL with CS or SQ1 alleles in an SQ1 BACKGROUND: showed the SQ1 allele to be associated with > 20% higher yield per ear, significantly higher flag leaf chlorophyll content, and wider flag leaves. Epidermal cell width and distance between leaf vascular bundles did not differ significantly between NILs, so the yield-associated gene may influence the number of cell files across the leaf through effects on cell division. Interestingly, comparative mapping with rice identified AINTEGUMENTA and G-protein subunit genes affecting lateral cell division at locations homologous to the wheat 7AL yield QTL

Genetic and association mapping study of wheat agronomic traits under contrasting water regimes

Genetic analyses and association mapping were performed on a winter wheat core collection of 96 accessions sampled from a variety of geographic origins. Twenty-four agronomic traits were evaluated over 3 years under fully irrigated, rainfed and drought treatments. Grain yield was the most sensitive trait to water deficit and was highly correlated with above-ground biomass per plant and number of kernels per m2. The germplasm was structured into four subpopulations. The association of 46 SSR loci distributed throughout the wheat genome with yield and agronomic traits was analyzed using a general linear model, where subpopulation information was used to control false-positive or spurious marker-trait associations (MTAs). A total of 26, 21 and 29 significant (P < 0.001) MTAs were identified in irrigated, rainfed and drought treatments, respectively. The marker effects ranged from 14.0 to 50.8%. Combined across all treatments, 34 significant (P < 0.001) MTAs were identified with nine markers, and R2 ranged from 14.5 to 50.2%. Marker psp3200 (6DS) and particularly gwm484 (2DS) were associated with many significant MTAs in each treatment and explained the greatest proportion of phenotypic variation. Although we were not able to recognize any marker related to grain yield under drought stress, a number of MTAs associated with developmental and agronomic traits highly correlated with grain yield under drought were identified

Durum wheat-Thinopyrum ponticum recombinant lines: a tool to finely describe homoeologous 7L arm regions.

As one important result of wheat chromosome engineering, creation of arrays of wheat-alien recombinant chromosomes allows assignment of markers and genes to defined physical locations, hence improving knowledge of structural-functional organization of wheat and alien chromosomal regions and to identify suitable markers for MAS of target genes. Regions involved in our research are the distal portions of wheat 7AL and Thinopyrum ponticum (tall wheatgrass, a wild wheat relative) 7AgL arms, the latter containing several genes of value for wheat improvement

WP4 ‐ Modernization of teaching contents 4.1. Need analysis for knowledge refreshment

This brochure is a result of the TEMPUS project “Building Capacity of Serbian Agricultural Education to Link with Society” (CaSA) 544072-TEMPUS-1-2013-1-RS-TEMPUS-SMHES (2013-4604/001-001). Daniela Šćepanović and Steve Quarrie were responsible for questionnaire construction, assisted by Slavica Čolić. Analysis of questionnaires was coordinated by Daniela Šćepanović, as well as final preparation and presentation of the results. For final document preparation, all CaSA Steering Committee members gave valuable contribution. For brochure final preparation Daniela Šćepanović, Vesna Poleksić and Goran Topisirović were in charge.TEMPUS Project: Building Capacity of Serbian Agricultural Education to Link with Society (CaSA) 544072-TEMPUS-1-2013-1-RS-TEMPUS-SMHES (2013 – 4604 / 001 - 001) Coordinator: University of Belgrade, Faculty of Agricultur