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Horizon Europe · European Union

AI-powered foodome characterization

Opens 20 Apr 2027

The EU's Horizon Europe programme expects to make 1 award of €7.8 million, from a total budget of €7.8 million. Applications close on 23 Sep 2027 (EU calls usually close at 17:00 Brussels time). Organisations in EU member states and Horizon Europe associated countries such as Türkiye can usually take part; the topic conditions control.

Expected outcome

Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

• an Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool able to accelerate the analysis of complex foodomics data to speed up the identification, structural characterisation, and quantification of chemicals present in food;

• improving capacity and synergies in foodomics research between academia, research infrastructures and industry.

Scope

Through food and beverages, the population is exposed to an immense variety of chemicals (as contaminants and as ingredients). The “foodome” is the complete set of compounds present in a food sample at a given time; it includes both endogenous biomolecules (produced through a species' metabolic processes) and exogenous compounds (natural and synthetic substances from production, processing, handling, and packaging). The current knowledge is largely confined to a narrow set of approximately 150 food components catalogued by traditional databases. These components represent only a very small fraction of the total chemical complexity present in foods, while thousands (>100,000) of compounds and contaminants remain largely unquantified and underexplored. Understanding this “nutrient dark matter” would require identifying, cataloguing and quantifying the full spectrum of substances present in our food and present in accessible, AI-ready databases. The need for such information is today a bottleneck to make the nutrition field predictive and data driven, and has the potential to make food processing more efficient in bringing new foods items on the market. Efforts to create such datasets are underway but owing to the quantity of samples (hundreds of thousands of compounds across thousands of foods), such databases often rely on high-throughput experimental methods which do not allow a precise characterisation of the molecules identified.

Who can apply

Consortium of at least 3 independent legal entities from 3 different EU Member States or associated countries, at least one in a Member State (Horizon Europe standard rule).

Applicant categories are a starting point. The official call decides eligibility.

Topics

Analytical chemistry Applied and industrial chemistry Artificial intelligence Biochemical research methods Biochemistry and molecular biology Organic chemistry AI Food safety Foodomics Machine learning Mass spectrometry Metabolomics Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Nutrition Omics

Timing

Single-stage call. Next deadline 2027-09-23. The portal states the exact cut-off time (EU calls usually close at 17:00 Brussels time).

How to apply

1. Read the full topic on the Funding & Tenders Portal: expected outcome, scope, type of action and the topic conditions, including any country restrictions.
2. Register each participating organisation in the Funding & Tenders Portal to get a PIC.
3. Consortium of at least 3 independent legal entities from 3 different EU Member States or associated countries (Horizon Europe standard rule; Türkiye is associated). Confirm in the topic conditions.
4. Prepare Part A (administrative forms and budget, completed in the portal) and Part B (the technical description on the official template for this type of action).
5. Submit in the portal before the cut-off time on the deadline day. Late submissions are not accepted.

From the call text

Who can apply

Not stated in the call text we hold — check the official page

Company stage

Not stated in the call text we hold — check the official page

Single applicant or consortium

Read the topic conditions on the EU Funding & Tenders Portal for eligible countries, consortium requirements, budget and the application route.

Where applicants must be based

Read the topic conditions on the EU Funding & Tenders Portal for eligible countries, consortium requirements, budget and the application route.

Where to apply

Read the topic conditions on the EU Funding & Tenders Portal for eligible countries, consortium requirements, budget and the application route.

Read the EU application guide

Where these facts come from

Official sources

Official call page

Facts on this page come from the official source and were last checked 14 Nov 2026. The funder's own documents, including later amendments, always take precedence.

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