b'INDUSTRY NEWSTAILORED TO SEED PROFESSIONALS, INDUSTRY NEWS DELIVERS THE PEOPLE, RESEARCH, BUSINESS AND PRODUCT NEWS YOU NEED TO KNOW. SUBMISSIONS ARE WELCOME. EMAIL US AT NEWS@SEEDWORLDGROUP.COM.BASF Venture Capital GmbH, the corporate venture com- responsible for the biosynthesis of betanin into the plants and pany of BASF Group, and Amathaon Capital, a venture capitalactivated these in the ripening fruit. Betanin isnt normally pro-company specializing in AgTech, are investing in the Tbingen- duced by tomatoes, but rather extracted from red beets and used based bioinformatics company Computomics. Existing share- as a natural food dye. These sorts of Genetic Engineering meth-holders include the seed investors High-Tech Grnderfondsods of producing substances in specially developed plant produc-and MBG Mittelstndische Beteiligungsgesellschaft Baden- tion systems will play an important role in the future, especially Wrttemberg. in drug manufacturing. The production of vaccines and antibod-ies using plants is already a very active field of research.Volunteer organisation PUM Netherlands senior experts and vegetable breeding company Rijk Zwaan are cooperatingOn 23 September, the European Parliament, the Council and the to support agricultural small and medium-sized enterprisesCommission celebrated the launch of an annual EU Organic (SMEs) in developing countries and emerging markets. PUMsDay. The three institutions signed a joint declaration estab-1600 expert volunteers work together with entrepreneurs in 42lishing from now on each 23 September as EU organic day. This different sectors and 34 countries worldwide. follows up on the Action Plan for the development of organic production, adopted by the Commission on 25 March 2021, which announced the creation of such a day to raise awareness Bayer announced that it will expand its vegetable seeds offer- of organic production. The overall aim of the Action Plan for the ings under the new Vegetables by Bayer umbrella to includedevelopment of organic production is to boost substantially the organically produced seed. The launch will focus on certifiedproduction and consumption of organic products in order to con-organic production in three key crops for the greenhouse andtribute to the achievement of the Farm to Fork and Biodiversity glasshouse market: tomato, sweet pepper and cucumber. Thesestrategies targets such as reducing the use of fertilisers, pesti-will be followed by tomato rootstock varieties in 2023. Varietiescides and anti-microbials. will be sold under both the Seminis and De Ruiter vegetable seed brands.Environment Secretary George Eustice announced changes to the regulation of gene edited crop trials for research purposes. On the occasion of the UN Food Systems Summit onThe John Innes Centre welcomes the proposed changes which September 23, 2021, the International Seed Federation (ISF)will allow field trials of genome edited crops, where the genetic launched four key initiatives to advance seed resilience in orderchanges could have occurred naturally or as a result of tradi-to contribute to the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. Thetional breeding methods, to progress without requiring the same seed sector, which is at the beginning of the food system, defineslevel of regulation that applies to genetically modified organ-Seed Resilience as the adaptability and capacity to contributeisms. The Government state this change could be implemented to food and nutrition security by making accessible sufficient,as early as the end of the year. diverse, locally adapted, improved, high quality varieties to all farmers taking into account environmental, health, social and economic aspects. NIAB has appointed Dr. Sigrid Heuer to lead its pre-breeding department and develop a programme on trait dissection and gene discovery for crop improvement and resilience, addressing HempFlax, Europes largest independent hemp grower andthe key issues farming faces while adapting to a changing cli-processor, announced plans to invest 3.0m at its headquartersmate and transitioning to sustainable farming systems. Heuer in Oude Pekela, Holland. Of this money, 1.8m will be spent onwill lead strategic research and development, building upon machinery improvements that will double the hemp fibre pro- NIABs expertise in pre-breeding of arable crops and comple-cessing capacity of the factory from 3 t/h to 6 t/h and modernisementing NIABs work in statistical genetics, biotechnology and the bagging lines, which package HempFlaxs increasingly popu- data science as well as its significant programme of farming lar animal bedding products. The remaining 1.2m will be spentsystems research and industry-facing knowledge exchange. on solar panels for the Dutch factory, enabling the company to generate its own energy. HempFlax also intends to introduce hydrogen-powered vehicles to its fleet of trucks, further reducingPivot Bio, the leading nitrogen innovator in agriculture with the COemissions of the company.a mission to replace synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, launched 2Connect, a new line of snack foods grown by farmers using Pivot Bios microbial nitrogen instead of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. Researchers at the Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry (IPB) in Halle have recently created purple tomatoes using Genetic Engineering methods. To do so, they inserted the genes 36IEUROPEAN SEEDIEUROPEAN-SEED.COM'