The project is finalized to establish long-term research co-operations through a coordinated joint program of research staff exchanges for short periods on the following topics: selection of plant species according to ethnobotanical and ethnopharmacological approaches; breeding to preserve biodiversity and gene reservation of food, medicinal and aromatic plants; cultivation of food, medicinal and aromatic plant species to improve the quality of the starting material for industrial use (using good agrotechnological guidelines); biotechnological protocols for the production of standardized plant material or for the maintainance of plant species; identification of rural areas which have to be examined as mapped sites and official knowledge degree of the nutraceuticals field; extraction, isolation and structural elucidation of secondary metabolites from plants in order to evaluate biological properties of plant extracts and their bioactive constituents as nutraceutical ingredients with innovative techniques and facilities; development of extraction and quali-quantitative evaluation of plant constituents with medicinal, food, agronomic and industrial interest (bioactive compounds, essential oils, natural aroma, flavour, fragrances, natural dyes); chemical profile of essential oils and volatile fractions for the selection of essential oil from different plant families; development and validation of bio-analytical methods devoted to biomarkers and active compounds in plant extracts; evaluation of antibacterial, antioxidant, cytotoxic, genotoxic, mutagen and antimutagen, apoptotic activity of plant extracts and derivatives; structure-activity relationship studies on standardized extracts or new bioactive compounds isolated from the selected plant material; Emi- or total synthesis of novel products from natural products identified as molecular target to development new drugs.