New cell biology facilities

The commissioning of the new laboratory facilities in Wageningen is an important step in terms of speed and quality in the development of new varieties,” says Paul Degreef, Head of KWS Vegetables. “By using innovative breeding approaches such as double haploid (DH) technology, on which we focus here at the site, we can respond faster to grower and consumer needs. These include disease resistances and yield stability for the growers and quality, taste, and appearance of the fruit. We are pleased to be making important progress in our headquarters’ research facilities in Wageningen, which will benefit all our breeding teams worldwide and ultimately our customers.”

David Downey, Cell Biology Lead in Wageningen, explains: “The production of homozygous parent lines is essential in plant breeding and at the same time a challenge. With the double haploid (DH) method, we are able to generate pure lines in a single generation. That means considerable time savings toward the development of parental lines.” In traditional methods, repeated self-pollination is used to produce homozygous lines; however, this takes seven to eight generations, and even then, the plants produced are not 100% homozygous. This is where the DH method is superior.

Speed up breeding

The first result of the facilities will be the provision of specific breeding lines for cucumber and pepper for the breeding sites in Spain, Italy, Mexico and Turkey. “Our new research facilities in Wageningen will help us to speed up the breeding process, allowing us to bring added value varieties to our customers in shorter times,” says Pablo Fernández-Miranda, Pepper breeder in Almeria, Spain.

The Cell Biology team in Wageningen is well-connected with the research group in Einbeck, and they developed the DH protocols together. Through this cooperation, production of DH lines for peppers and cucumbers in Wageningen will start as of July – that’s very fast considering that we only added these two crops to the portfolio in 2019. Although the initial focus of the DH vegetable protocols is on cucumber and pepper, the aim is to expand with more vegetables in the future.

"Protocol development for cucumber and pepper DH lines has been an incredibly exciting and fascinating new challenge for us,” says Clemens Springmann, Principal Research Lead Cell Biology. “We were able to learn a lot and exchange ideas with our vegetable colleagues from breeding, cell biology and molecular breeding in a short time."

Central hub for the Vegetable Business Unit

The KWS Vegetables business unit is located in the Plus Ultra II building complex of Kadans Science Partner on the campus of Wageningen University & Research (Wageningen University & Research, WUR for short). It is the central hub from which the operations of the Vegetable Business Unit are managed. Currently there are 23 employees working at this site. The new research facilities measure nearly 450 square meters, including lab space, tissue culture space and three phytotrons. |