Dear readers,

Summer, sun, sunflowers – our breeder Péter Streb from Hungary talks about his passion for the bright yellow crop. Driven by a pioneering spirit, he and his team have spent recent years working on the first variety of our own, which is now undergoing registration. And sunflower is an all-rounder. Find out more about the diverse ways it can be used in the portrait.

There is also a new approach for our portfolio, one that is holistic and enables greater proximity to farmers. Our objective with Customer Centricity is to simplify our structures, expand our expertise and promote cross-crop work. In this issue, we tell you more about our approach and the next steps.

Turning one into two: What would take years as part of regular breeding can be accomplished quickly and efficiently in the laboratory. Doubled haploid technology allows us to fix genetically important traits in plants and thus make them available for breeding. We describe what spores and a shaker have to do with that.