Marcel Bruins, the editorial director for European Seed, sat down with Harrold Van Den Burg, vice president of Innovation for Crops at KeyGene, at the Euroseeds 2022 Congress to talk about his new position.
“It’s really about trying to connect research in crops that our state shareholders are interested in, and also third party business to new developments and new innovations that we’re doing as a company,” Van Den Burg said.
In his former role, he was more focussed on plant pathology, but now, he is closer to the business, where he looks at technologies or improvements that really connect to traits. Everything from tissue culture and what can be done with seeds, all the way up to the data, “which makes it a challenge to connect all these research programs and to see where the new developments are.”
Until recently, Van Den Burg was also the associate professor at the molecular plant pathology group of this Warmerdam Institute for Life Sciences in Amsterdam.
“[The jobs] are close in the sense that it’s both about challenges for our society. Different in the sense of the university, we’re training, say, the new generation of researchers,” he said. “And now I’m working with the experts….. Now I’m at the stage where you really try to connect people that are experts in their field and bring that together on certain topics.”
To learn more about Harrold Van Den Burg and his new position at Keygene and more, watch the interview above.
