Portugal has just become the tenth country to ratify the ELIXIR Consortium Agreement (ECA), joining the UK, Sweden, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Norway, the Netherlands, Israel and EMBL as full members. The ECA provides the legal basis for ELIXIR and ratification means that Portugal is now a full participating member.
Miguel Seabra, Head of FCT, Portugal, explains, “We have just completed the selection of the research infrastructures to be included in the first ever National Roadmap of Research Infrastructures. Becoming a member of ELIXIR is very much in line with our goal to ensure strong coherence and efficiency between Portuguese research infrastructures and their European counterparts, in particular those that are aligned with the ESFRI roadmap.”
The Portuguese ELIXIR Node has a focus on plant bioinformatics, and in particular woody plants such as the cork tree and will compliment the plant science related services run by other ELIXIR Nodes.
Further information is available from the FCT website here.