The announcement describes two research-development programmes rather than completed technologies. CHIRAL-Solutions will investigate how chirality can be used to tune chemical reactivity and selectivity, optical activity, mechanical properties and charge dynamics in advanced materials. BIOSWITCH will pursue a combined theoretical and experimental approach to designing multifunctional, switchable bio-inspired catalysts. Those catalysts are intended to carry out complex chemical transformations while adjusting their activity and selectivity in response to external stimuli, including light, the presence of certain ions and redox changes. The grants provide support for planned research into materials and catalytic systems, not evidence that a commercial device or catalyst has already been achieved.

Chirality is a geometric property in which a structure cannot be superimposed on its mirror image, as illustrated by the difference between left and right hands. CHIRAL-Solutions is built around the possibility that this molecular handedness can serve as a design feature in materials used for energy conversion and chemical synthesis. The researchers will work with halide perovskites as well as molecular and supramolecular chiral systems. Their planned work includes synthesis and preparation, followed by the characterisation, understanding and modelling of systems such as solar cells, light-emitting diodes, solar-fuel generation systems and stereoselective catalytic processes.

Mora Seró and Escuder’s proposal links the preparation of chiral materials with their implementation in energy and biomimetic applications. The intended scope includes photoelectrochemical systems and optoelectronic devices, alongside asymmetric catalysis. By studying chiral structures across several material classes, the team aims to determine how handedness can contribute to the control of reaction outcomes, optical behaviour, mechanical properties and charge dynamics. The project also emphasises the use of elements with a low environmental impact. However, the announcement does not specify individual formulations, target devices, quantitative performance thresholds or the results of experiments, so the project’s practical benefits remain to be established during the four-year programme.

The CHIRAL-Solutions proposal identifies potential routes to technology transfer in the energy and chemical sectors, as well as possible relevance for pharmaceuticals. More efficient and durable optoelectronic devices are identified as a potential industrial outcome in energy, while more selective and sustainable catalysts could support chemical manufacturing. The pharmaceutical industry is highlighted because it relies heavily on the synthesis of chiral drugs and could benefit from advances in stereoselective processes. These possibilities describe expected areas of impact rather than demonstrated commercial gains. The grant supports the investigation, preparation and evaluation needed to determine whether the proposed materials can deliver improvements in specific operating conditions.

Several researchers from Universitat Jaume I will contribute to CHIRAL-Solutions, including Sofia Masi, Eva M. Barea, Rosario Vidal, Beatriz Julián and Eva Falomir. The programme is designed to connect material synthesis with characterisation, modelling and evaluation in energy and catalytic systems. That scope gives the team several ways to examine its central proposal, from preparing the materials and analysing their structures to studying their behaviour in devices and stereoselective processes. The announcement does not report completed material demonstrations or device tests, and it does not establish that any one system will outperform an achiral counterpart. Those questions are part of the research agenda that the grant is intended to support.

BIOSWITCH takes a different approach to multifunctional catalysis. Moliner and Poyatos propose designing catalysts through the use of SMART ligands, meaning switchable, multifunctional, adaptable and tuneable ligands, together with supramolecular principles. The intended goal is a versatile catalytic platform capable of performing complex chemical transformations and responding to different external conditions. By changing activity and selectivity in response to light, selected ions or redox changes, the proposed catalysts would imitate the responsive behaviour of enzymes. The project is therefore intended to investigate controllability and versatility in catalyst design, although the release provides no experimental performance data and makes no claim that enzyme-level behaviour has already been attained.

The BIOSWITCH team also plans to develop nanocarriers and catalysts designed to operate in both chemical and biological environments. Eduardo Peris, Iñaki Tuñón, Katarzyna Swiderek, Sergio Martí, Sergio Gonell and J. J. Ruiz-Pernía are among the researchers involved. The project combines computational modelling with experimental synthesis and characterisation so that structural and functional relationships can be examined through both theoretical and laboratory methods. Potential applications include sustainable synthesis, drug delivery and photodynamic therapy. These are prospective application areas in a four-year research programme, not verified clinical uses, and the announcement does not provide evidence of therapeutic performance or performance in biological settings.

By the end of BIOSWITCH, the team aims to develop a platform technology for responsive catalysis that could change how catalysts are designed, optimised and applied in chemical manufacturing and biomedicine. The phrase describes the intended endpoint of the project, not a platform already available. Its emphasis on a multidisciplinary design process is specific to BIOSWITCH: the project combines molecular ligand design, supramolecular chemistry, computational modelling, experimental synthesis and characterisation. CHIRAL-Solutions has a different structure, centred on preparing and studying chiral materials and integrating them into energy, optoelectronic and catalytic systems. The release does not establish that the two projects share a single experimental platform or a common set of performance metrics.

Prometeo is described as the Generalitat Valenciana’s most scientifically demanding funding scheme. It is intended for groups with established research records, the capacity to conduct frontier research and successful participation in major national and European programmes such as Horizon Europe and the European Research Council. The 2026 call offers a stable four-year funding framework intended to support continuity in research and scientific planning while reducing uncertainty associated with annual funding calls. It can also help groups recruit research staff, acquire scientific equipment and establish national and international collaborations with greater planning capacity. For the two Universitat Jaume I teams, the awards supply sustained support for two complementary but distinct research programmes: one on tuning material properties through chirality and the other on controlling catalytic activity through switchable, bio-inspired designs.

Subject of Research: Four-year research projects on chiral materials and switchable bio-inspired catalysts at Universitat Jaume I

Article Title: UJI's Institute of Advanced Materials secures two Prometeo projects to develop new chiral materials and a new generation of enzyme-inspired catalysts

Article References: UJI's Institute of Advanced Materials secures two Prometeo projects to develop new chiral materials and a new generation of enzyme-inspired catalysts. Original publication (Bibliographic details unavailable.)

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: chiral materials, bio-inspired catalysts, Universitat Jaume I, Prometeo programme, halide perovskites, supramolecular chemistry, responsive catalysis, optoelectronics, asymmetric catalysis, energy materials, UJI's, Institute

The scientific leadership rests with Vicent Arbona Mengual of the Department of Biology, Biochemistry and Natural Sciences at Universitat Jaume I. His team also includes Miguel González Guzmán, coordinator of the GaMBiT research group – Genetic and Metabolic Integration of Biotic and Abiotic Interactions – together with Rosario Vidal and Beatriz Julián from the Institute of Advanced Materials (INAM-UJI). The wider consortium spans 11 partners from five countries: Spain, Italy, France, Germany and Sweden. Spanish participants include the Valencian Institute for Agricultural Research and the Galician University–Business Foundation. Italy contributes the Council for Agricultural Research and Economics (CREA) and UNITEC S.p.A., while France is represented by the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD), the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE) and Doriane SAS. Germany’s Computomics GmbH and CYBRES GmbH join the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences to complete the partnership.

The project’s primary biological targets are sweet orange (Citrus sinensis) and mandarin (Citrus reticulata), two species that dominate global citrus production and consumption. The central objective is to generate genetically modified lines with greater resilience to the adverse conditions caused by climate change and its exacerbating effects on pests and diseases. Rising temperatures, altered rainfall patterns and shifting pest distributions are already straining citrus orchards across the Mediterranean and beyond, making the development of hardier varieties an increasingly urgent agricultural priority. By combining stress physiology expertise with advanced genetic engineering, the consortium aims to produce trees that can maintain productivity under conditions that would compromise conventional varieties.

Resilience is only half of the project’s ambition. CitrusAld also pursues the biofortification of citrus fruits to enhance their nutritional properties. Citrus fruits are widely regarded as functional foods that combine nutritional value with health-promoting properties, thanks to their antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and cardioprotective effects. The project seeks to increase naturally occurring beneficial compounds such as flavonoids and furanocoumarins, while also introducing a compound that citrus does not normally produce: resveratrol. This stilbene, best known as a constituent of grapes and cocoa, has been selected for its cardioprotective and anti-ageing properties. If successful, the work could transform an everyday fruit into an even richer source of bioactive molecules, blurring the line between conventional nutrition and functional food design.

Identifying which genes to modify in a genome as complex as citrus is a formidable challenge, and this is where artificial intelligence enters the project. The consortium will design and implement AI-based systems capable of analysing and integrating large volumes of biological data to pinpoint the most suitable target genes for each desired modification. Rather than relying on laborious trial-and-error approaches, the researchers intend to use computational pipelines that can sift through genomic, transcriptomic and metabolic datasets to prioritise candidate genes whose manipulation is most likely to yield stress tolerance or enhanced nutritional profiles. This data-driven gene discovery methodology represents one of the project’s key methodological innovations and reflects a broader trend of machine learning reshaping plant biotechnology.

Once target genes are identified, the actual genetic modifications will be carried out using New Genomic Techniques, or NGTs, which are now permitted in Europe under the newly updated regulatory framework. These techniques allow precise edits to a plant’s genome without introducing foreign DNA in the way older transgenic methods did, and their recent regulatory acceptance in the European Union has opened the door to projects of this kind. The consortium will also integrate novel materials capable of overcoming existing biological barriers that have historically limited the genetic efficiency of citrus species. Citrus is notoriously difficult to transform genetically, with recalcitrant tissues, long generation times and barriers to regeneration, so the development of new delivery materials could prove as consequential as the gene edits themselves.

In parallel with genome editing, the consortium will explore complementary strategies based on RNA interference technology. RNAi allows researchers to slow down or silence the expression of specific genes without permanently altering the genome, offering a reversible and highly targeted means of modulating plant traits. A central technical hurdle for RNAi in plants is delivering the interfering molecules into plant tissues, where cell walls and other barriers block conventional approaches. The CitrusAld team plans to use novel materials as delivery vehicles into plant tissues, an approach that draws on the materials science expertise within the consortium and could establish new protocols for transient gene silencing in woody perennial crops.

The funding mechanism behind the project is as distinctive as its science. The EIC Pathfinder Challenges programme, part of the European Innovation Council, supports highly innovative, high-risk scientific research with the potential to generate entirely new technologies in the future. It deliberately funds the early stages of research, when ideas are still being explored in the laboratory and there is not yet a clear commercial application. The programme’s objective is to establish the scientific and technological foundations for breakthroughs that, in the long term, can transform entire sectors or help address major societal challenges. For a crop that underpins the economies of Mediterranean regions and provides vitamin-rich food to billions of people, the societal stakes of climate-resilient citrus are considerable.

The four-year project will begin in October 2026 under proposal number 101306995, giving the consortium a defined window in which to deliver its gene discovery pipelines, transformation protocols and biofortified citrus lines. The breadth of the partnership – spanning academic plant science institutes, agricultural research organisations, materials specialists and companies – suggests a deliberate effort to cover the full pipeline from fundamental gene discovery to applied field-relevant varieties. The involvement of computational firms such as Computomics and CYBRES alongside plant science heavyweights like INRAE and CIRAD signals that the AI and data integration components are treated as core infrastructure rather than an afterthought.

For consumers and growers alike, the project’s promise is twofold: citrus trees better equipped to endure a warming, pest-pressured world, and fruit with an enhanced portfolio of health-promoting compounds. Whether engineered resilience and resveratrol-enriched oranges will reach commercial orchards remains a question for the years beyond the project’s horizon, but CitrusAld represents one of the most comprehensive European attempts to marry genomics, artificial intelligence, materials science and plant breeding in service of a single iconic crop. As climate change accelerates and the tools of biotechnology mature, the humble orange may become a showcase for how 21st-century science re-engineers the foods we have cultivated for millennia.

Subject of Research: Genetic modification of citrus crops for climate resilience and nutritional biofortification

Article Title: Universitat Jaume I leads European consortium to develop genetically modified citrus lines with greater resilience to climate change, pests and diseases

Article References: Universitat Jaume I leads European consortium to develop genetically modified citrus lines with greater resilience to climate change, pests and diseases. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: citrus, genetic modification, climate change, EIC Pathfinder, Universitat Jaume I, New Genomic Techniques, RNA interference, biofortification, resveratrol, artificial intelligence, sweet orange, mandarin