MYCOBEANS is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Staff Exchange project addressing the emerging risk posed by mycotoxins in legumes, a food category of increasing nutritional, economic and environmental relevance. Despite their expanding role in sustainable food systems, legumes remain under-investigated with respect to fungal contamination patterns, toxin diversity and exposure assessment.

The scientific challenge addressed by MYCOBEANS lies at the interface between food safety, analytical chemistry, mycology and data-driven approaches. Assessing mycotoxin risks in legumes requires the integration of advanced analytical techniques with biological, toxicological and contextual knowledge, including fungal ecology, processing practices and region-specific factors influencing contamination.

For this reason, MYCOBEANS is explicitly designed as a staff exchange project, where scientific progress and training rely on physical mobility and hands-on collaboration rather than remote interaction. Knowledge transfer operates on two complementary levels.

Early career scientists are exposed to interdisciplinary training experiences beyond their original background. Through secondments, chemists gain experience in genomics and bioinformatics, molecular biologists are trained in advanced mass spectrometry workflows, and food scientists acquire toxicological perspectives relevant to risk assessment. These exchanges foster a shared methodological language across disciplines that cannot be developed within a single institution.

In parallel, senior researchers engage in reciprocal knowledge exchange by bringing their established expertise into unfamiliar scientific contexts. This process includes targeted hands-on training activities, such as interdisciplinary workshops hosted by partner institutions. Examples include workshops on nanopore-based technologies led by genomics and bioinformatics experts, alongside additional events introducing methodologies not previously available within the hosting laboratories.

Intersectoral mobility further strengthens this approach. MYCOBEANS includes secondments between academia and industry in both directions—industry to academia and academia to industry—with additional exchanges planned during the project.

By combining interdisciplinary, intersectoral and senior-level exchange, MYCOBEANS promotes a genuinely bidirectional flow of expertise. The consortium, spanning Europe, the United Kingdom and ASEAN countries, provides access to diverse regulatory, climatic and production contexts that cannot be replicated within a single institution.