Spain and Portugal have been elected to host headquarters of the Microbial Resource Research Infrastructure (MIRRI), a new infrastructure of European Research oriented to facilitate the access and legal management of bioresource for efficient development of the R&D in the field of biotechnology. The Universitat de València will be headquarters of the computer and telematic services, while in the Universidade do Minho will host the headquarters statutory of infrastructure.
Microbial resources represent the essential raw material for the advance of knowledge in health, biotechnology, agriculture, food technology and, in general, as support for research in Life Sciences.
MIRRI, that will be constituted as legal non-profit organisation, will facilitate the access to microbial and quality resources, to the information about them and the associated services, by ensuring the enforcement of laws, of codes of ethics and of the safety.
Central Unit of MIRRI, whose headquarters will be at the Universidade do Minho (Braga, Portugal), will operate from a core group of collaborative work located in the Universitat de València. Moreover, it will be supported by LifeWatchSpain, an electronic infrastructure of global reference for protection, management and sustainable use of biodiversity.
The decision has been made this week by the highest decision-making organ of MIRRI, formed by the delegates from countries committed in the infrastructure construction (Belgium, France, Greece, Latvia, Poland, Portugal and Spain) after the defence that the Spain and Portugal delegation have done of their proposal on 26th April in Brussels.
“The aim is to establish a close collaboration, at European level, among members (researchers and industry) and the Microbial Resources Centres that work under certain quality criteria. The objective is to generate solutions to the social challenges in this field and to contribute to development of a sustainable bio-based economy in accordance with the horizon 2020”, points Rosa Aznar, microbiologist, director of the Spanish Type Culture Collection (CECT), in the Science Park of the Universitat de València, and coauthor of the proposal that has turned the Universitat de València in the best candidate to host a fundamental part of the project MIRRI.
The proposal, elaborated by Nelson Lima (Micoteca da Universidade do Minho) and Rosa Aznar (Universitat de València), has received the institutional support od the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) of the Ministry of Science, Technology and High Education of Portugal, and of the Office of the Secretary of Research and Innovation of the Ministry of Economics, Industry and Competitiveness of Spain (MINECO).
In parallel of the construction of the distributed infrastructure, MIRRI begins the process for granting the status of European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) by the European Commission. That will confer a legal specific status with tax benefits and access to community funding.
The first phase of this legal process is programmed on September 2018, with the aim of legally establishing MIRRI at the end of 2019.
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