COCO-AI

COCO-AI is a four-year Horizon Europe innovation project running from 2026 to 2030. Coordinated by Fraunhofer IME, it brings together nine partners across seven countries to develop an AI-supported platform for producing high-value natural ingredients through plant cell culture. Cocoa is the project’s flagship demonstrator, with scale-up planned toward a 10,000-litre industrial demonstration.

The platform aims to make plant cell culture development faster and more systematic, linking cell-line development, cultivation, process optimisation and scale-up. AI-supported tools will use experimental data and image analysis to guide decisions, including assessment of cell characteristics such as friability. The project will also investigate six secondary metabolite formulations and evaluate production through industrial, economic, environmental and regulatory assessments.

COCO-AI plans to share open-source decision-support tools, standardised procedures, datasets, methods and publications for use beyond its consortium. Its work also addresses plant material provenance and access and benefit-sharing obligations, while exploring how cell culture could complement agriculture and support more reliable ingredient supply. The project welcomes engagement from researchers, manufacturers, investors, farmers and policymakers.