The Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership (SBEP) has preannounced its 4th Joint Transnational Call for Research and Innovation (R&I) projects in the blue economy.

💶 Funding
The call will make available close to €37 million, contributed by 35 funding organisations across 28 countries, to support transnational R&I projects that contribute to Europe's transition towards a sustainable blue economy.

Malta-based applicants are eligible to apply for funding for Research and Innovation (R&I) projects. For details, please follow Xjenza Malta website. 

🌊 Priority Areas

• Transitioning blue economy sectors for sustainability and strategic autonomy;
• Managing sea uses through digital and ecosystem-based approaches;
• Promoting sustainable blue bioresources;
• Building resilience in coastal communities.

📅 Provisional Timeline

• Call launch: 14 September 2026
• Pre-proposal deadline: 16 November 2026
• Full proposal deadline: 14 June 2027

🤝 Partner Search
The SBEP Partner Search Tool is already available to help applicants identify project partners and prepare competitive proposals ahead of the official launch."

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Photo credits: James Ciarlo` ©

Honey bees and other pollinators sit quietly behind much of the food we eat. By carrying pollen from flower to flower, they make it possible for most crops to set fruit. As climate change brings hotter summers, longer droughts, and an earlier, more unpredictable spring, the pressure on these small but essential workers keeps growing. Over the past years, the BeeSustain project (Integrative Modelling for Enhanced Beekeeping Carrying Capacity) set out to help Malta’s beekeepers meet that pressure with better information. Led by the University of Malta’s Biodiversity and Ecology Research Group (BERG) and funded by the Xjenza Malta Research Excellence Programme (REP) 2024, the project has now reached its conclusion, and it leaves behind a richer picture of how honey bees, other pollinators, plants, and climate fit together on the Maltese islands.

BeeSustain centred on an experimental apiary at Manikata, home to colonies of the endemic Maltese honey bee (Apis mellifera ruttneri). Earlier BERG research showed this honey bee to be especially well suited to local conditions. Around those hives, the project brought together three disciplines of science that rarely meet in one place: the biology of the honey bees and the flowers they visit, the mapping of the surrounding landscape, and the monitoring of local weather and climate conditions. What follows is a look at what each of those strands achieved.

Reading the landscape through the bees

One of the project’s most innovative strands was its use of DNA-based analysis to build a clearer picture of the plants which support bee colonies through the year via their nectiferous flowers and pollen. Analysing plant DNA collected from bee’s guts (that way, we were sure that the bees were feeding on the plant), allowed us to identify the main seasonal forage patterns around the 

Photo credits: James Ciarlo` ©

Manikata apiary. The picture that emerged was as a broad and varied menu in spring, a summer strongly linked to Maltese wild thyme, and an autumn heavily reliant on eucalyptus and carob. Alongside this, honey samples were assessed for colour, consistency and taste, revealing very similar seasonal patterns.

Together, these findings show us that the food landscape available to honey bees changes dramatically over the year, an essential insight for understanding the carrying capacity of a landscape (or how many hives can an area sustainably support).

Mapping the best places to keep honey bees

To work out where bees are most likely to thrive, BeeSustain turned to environmental data. Using drone imagery and open satellite data, the team mapped the vegetation around the apiary and built a decision-making framework that ranks locations by how much good forage they offer. This was then used to estimate the “carrying capacity” of the Manikata area, roughly how many colonies the local flowers can sustainably feed. The result is both a practical figure and, more importantly, a repeatable method that can be applied to other sites across the islands.

Watching the weather around the hive

A weather station installed beside the hives recorded the local climate in fine detail, allowing researchers to describe the specific conditions the colony experiences and to compare them against Malta’s national weather records. This effort also opened an unexpected door: in the course of the

work, the team recovered and evaluated a set of observations from nine stations across the islands, producing the most detailed spatial picture yet of how Malta’s climate varies from place to place. This research is currently undergoing peer-review for scientific publication.

Bringing all of these threads into a single predictive tool proved more demanding than a project of this length could fully complete: the hive record so far covers only a single year, and some of the data needs further development before firm forecasts can be made. But this is the nature of pioneering work. BeeSustain has built the methods, and assembled the first purpose-collected datasets that a fully working system will be built upon.

Featured at the University of Malta Research Expo 2025 and feeding into new scientific publications, BeeSustain has laid firm groundwork for a smarter, more climate-resilient future for Maltese beekeeping. For more information, visit the BERG website and Facebook page

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A new JPI Oceans-funded project, AQUA-SHELF, has been recommended for funding under the Joint Call on Offshore Freshened Groundwater (OFG), funded by partners from Malta, Italy, Germany and Greece. 

Coordinated by Prof. Sebastiano D'Amico (University of Malta), the project will carry out one of the first dedicated scientific drilling and hydrogeological validation campaigns for OFG in a European continental shelf setting at a site in the northern Adriatic Sea. The research will combine offshore drilling, field measurements and modelling to better understand how these subsurface freshwater systems are structured and how they function. 

By addressing critical knowledge gaps, AQUA-SHELF will strengthen the scientific basis needed to assess sustainability and inform decision making on the management of coastal and offshore water resources. Its findings are expected to contribute to future policy development in this field of emerging attention.

Xjenza Malta, Ministero dell'Università e della Ricerca, Italy, Regione Autonoma Friuli Venezia Giulia, Italy, Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, Germany, and the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, Greece with in-kind contributions. The Joint Call is co-branded by the UN Ocean Decade.

Xjenza Malta is inviting international and local experts to support research excellence by joining its growing pool of evaluators. Contribute your expertise, gain recognition, and help shape the future of research and innovation in Malta.

Continue reading following the link below.

Are you looking to access world-class marine Research Infrastructures across Europe -  at no cost?

The Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership (SBEP) is opening the 2nd cut-off of its Rolling Transnational Access Call, and we want to make sure you're ready.

Join us for a live Information Webinar where we'll walk you through everything you need to know -  from eligibility and submission tips to lessons learned from the first round.

📅  28 July 2026

🕐  11:00–12:00 CEST

💻  Online - free and open to all

👉  Register now: link 

What to expect:

🔹  A recap of the Call's scope, eligibility, and evaluation criteria

🔹  What worked (and what didn't) - insights from the 1st cut-off

🔹  Step-by-step guidance on the EPSS submission platform

🔹  Live tour of the Research Infrastructures Catalogue

🔹  Your questions answered by the TA Management Working Group

Whether you're a first-time applicant or looking to strengthen a resubmission, this is the session to attend.

Don't miss out -  spread the word among your research teams and networks!

👉🏽Full call details can be found in the external link below.

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🔉The Water4All Joint Transnational Call has been officially pre-announced, offering an excellent opportunity for Malta-based entities to participate in international collaborative research and innovation projects.

Eligible Malta-based organisations can access funding through the Access to Partnerships (A2P) Scheme, which supports participation in international collaborative research and innovation proposals.

📧Should you be interested, kindly contact eusubmissions.xjenzamalta@gov.mt for more information.

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