We build a ‘smart breeding’ product pipeline

The CropXR Institute builds the early compartments of what will become a ‘smart breeding’ pipeline that will enable for-profit and not-for-profit breeders to more rapidly develop actual products and bring them to the market sooner.

Through our range of activities, the institute builds, maintains, and widens this pipeline. We do that, for example, by facilitating and promoting communication, sharing and collaboration between all innovators and the relevant stakeholders, including scientists, companies, farmers, non-profit organisations, and governments.

A growing number of resilient crops on the market will ultimately have important impacts on agriculture and on society at large.

The work of the institute is organised in a number of interrelated components:

Research

• (PlantXR) We work to better understand resilience of plants against multiple (and combined) stresses such as drought, heat, flooding, salinisation, soil degradation, pests, and diseases, use those insights to develop an innovative ‘smart breeding’ concept to create more resilient varieties of various plant species, and study together with stakeholders how their ultimate positive impact can be maximized;
• (DataXR) We build and share a dedicated data infrastructure to support our research;
• (AgroXR) We study how crop resilience can be optimised for new cultivation methods to maximise the potential of future resilient agricultural systems.

Education

(EduXR) In collaboration with providers of ‘green education’ at the various levels we map the changing requirements for professionals in plant research, breeding, and agricultural settings and coordinate the work to develop and update curricula at academic universities and universities of applied sciences in the Netherlands. Those professionals will need to be able to build and use bridges between a broad spectrum of green (plant science) and blue (data, AI, modelling) disciplines.

Knowledge Transfer

(TransferXR) We work with companies and other institutions both in the Netherlands and worldwide to spawn new basic and translational research projects that aim to fine-tune and apply our insights and the newly developed ‘smart breeding concept’ to as many breeders, crops and growers as possible. Also, new initiatives will be developed that enhance international collaboration on CropXR’s research topics.

Support and PR

A central office manages, supports, and interconnects the various parts and elements of the Institute. It also works to further the mission by building and maintaining effective public relations with the world at large.