Turning climate-related information into added value for traditional Mediterranean grape, olive, and durum wheat food systems

The MED-GOLD project (https://doi.org/10.3030/776467) excee- ded expectations significantly. As a research and innovation project, MED-GOLD was expected to co-develop climate services at proof-of- concept (i.e., prototype) rather than real market level. By contrast, not only was MED-GOLD able to demonstrate the added value of the pilot climate services, but it also addressed the replicability and marketability side of the services to the point that major European and international institutions showed interest in the MED-GOLD climate services and ICT platform, creating real business opportunities during the project life- cycle and beyond the duration of the project. MED-GOLD was a 54-month research and innovation project with the initial goal of demonstrating the proof-of-concept for climate ser- vices in agriculture using three hallmarks of the Mediterranean food system: grape and wine, olive and olive oil, and durum wheat and pasta. The project sought to prototype climate services by developing case studies for these three major Mediterranean traditional systems. This MED-GOLD Special Issue provides evidence of the added value resulting from the co-development of pilot climate services in agricul- ture, using case studies co-developed with Sogrape (https://sogrape. com/en) for grape and wine in the Douro region of Portugal, with DCOOP (https://www.dcoop.es/) for olive and olive oil in the Andalusia region of Spain, and with Barilla G. e R. Fratelli S.p.A. (https://www. barilla.com/en-us) for durum wheat and pasta in Italy