Construction underway on Nutreco’s new Garden of the Future

Innovation
Article
Investment
28 September 2023

We are excited to announce that we have started construction on Nutreco’s new center for medicinal plant solutions, called Nutreco's Garden of the Future. This groundbreaking facility will be the hub for our Phytotechnology team and gather its activities under one roof, from discovery work and experimental cultivation plots to plant development and plant production. Nutreco’s Garden of the Future will be a very unique asset for our company, unlike anything in the industry today.

Located in the heart of the “Phyto Valley” in Thurgau, Switzerland – where phyto-pharmaceutical companies, startups and laboratories have created a network of excellence over the past decades – Nutreco's Garden of the Future will play a key role in the discovery and development of proprietary phytotechnology solutions for our Nutreco Exploration team. It will be led by Dr. Bernd Büter, Director of the Phytotechnology Program and Nutreco's Garden of the Future. Dr. Karin Berger, Phytotechnology Discovery Director, will serve as ethnobotanist, responsible for screening the plants and confirming their efficacy.

Nutreco's Garden of the Future will officially open in the spring of 2024, and we look forward to presenting our new facility to employees, customers and the media. Its infrastructure and facilities will include offices, laboratories for testing biological activities in bioassays and analytical work, a greenhouse for plant breeding and propagation, experimental fields for the development of growing protocols and a “Future Garden” to display our plants.

The work being done at the discovery facility will focus on creating Phyto-complexes: plants or plant metabolites which, when added to feed, have physiological impacts that consistently support resilience, performance and welfare of aquatic species and farm animals. Our Phyto-complexes are developed in direct response to an aquaculture or livestock market issue brought to the Nutreco Exploration team’s attention by our business partners across Nutreco. Each phase of discovery and development involves that business partner, to ensure we stay closely connected to the business and meet the very specific needs of our customers. The fact that our Phyto-complexes are intentionally created by and developed for the business sets them apart from the products already available on the market. Nutreco’s Phyto-complexes are novel and standardised; they target a specific physiological issue, and are proprietary, sustainable and effective.

Nutreco’s purpose of Feeding the Future requires bold moves and radical thinking. Our intention through the company’s Phytotechnology program is to explore how the plant kingdom can be leveraged to address issues in the animal kingdom within modern production systems. We are establishing our center of medicinal plant solutions called Nutreco's Garden of the Future, in the heart of the Phyto Valley, an area known worldwide as a concentrated phytopharmacy ecosystem of capabilities and ideas, to enable us to attract new talent and fresh points of view, and continuously feed Nutreco’s innovation portfolio.
Dr. David Bravo, Nutreco Chief Science Officer and Managing Director of Nutreco Exploration