The SAFENUT Action: “Safeguard of almond and hazelnut genetic resources from traditional uses to modern agro industrial opportunities” represents a resourceful strategy for reorganizing and sharing, in a more efficient manner, the genetic resources by upgrading the knowledge on their value and uses. The main results are the following: 1) Data acquisition on the in situ and ex situ European germplasm. The data acquisition was performed in order to share information on the number and the kind of accessions present in the partners" collection. A list of 215 cultivars and 58 selections of hazelnuts existing in 13 collections and a list of 180 almond cultivars present in 4 partner Countr ies were released, amending the spelling mistakes. 2) A survey was carried out in order to recover the on farm endangered cultivars: 88 new hazelnut ecotypes and 122 almond clones, confirmed by SSR markers, were selected and evaluated. 3) 66 traditional hazelnuts and 167 almond cultivars were assessed using harmonised morphological descriptors. 4) 295 hazelnuts and 240 almond genotypes were analysed by molecular markers to verify the identity of the genetic material. Two hundred and seventy five almond accessions were genotyped for self-incompatibility genes. 5) 110 cultivars of hazelnut were evaluated for fatty acids" content, 5γ for mineral, protein and phenolic compounds. Concerning almond 53 cultivars were evaluated for fatty acids, mineral protein and phenolic compounds. 6) A survey was carried out on the traditional knowledge: 74 farmers were involved in collecting data on traditional practices from partner Countries. 7) The European SAFENUT database was established on the basis of the outcome of the characterization activities which can be found at http://www.safenut.net