Nutreco celebrated the opening of its Garden of the Future, the new hub for its Phytotechnology program, this week. Located in Thurgau, Switzerland, the groundbreaking facility gathers all of Nutreco’s phytotechnology activities, from discovery and experimental cultivation to plant development and production, under one roof.
Nutreco celebrates grand opening of its Garden of the Future
The two-day grand opening event showcased the work being done at the Garden of the Future for customers and journalists through garden tours, presentations and workshops by members of the company’s Exploration team. Nutreco’s new CEO David Blakemore offered opening and closing remarks and its Chief Science Officer David Bravo was the keynote speaker on both days.
The Garden of the Future facility includes access to a 500 square meter experimental greenhouse for plant breeding and propagation, a 5,000 square meter vegetative mass propagation greenhouse, around 30 hectares of cultivation space and a “Future Garden” to display the facility’s novel plants.
Nutreco’s Garden of the Future is led by its Director Dr. Bernd Büter, who is also Director of the company’s Phytotechnology Program. Dr. Karin Berger, Phytotechnology Discovery Director, serves as ethnobotanist, responsible for screening the plants and confirming their efficacy.
The facility is located in an area known as the Phyto Valley, which contains a network of phyto-pharmaceutical companies, startups and laboratories. It is focused on creating phytotechnology solutions, called “Phyto-complexes” – plants or plant metabolites, that when added to feed, have physiological impacts that consistently support performance, health and welfare of aquatic species, farm and companion animals. Phyto-complexes are developed in direct response to existing market issues, identified in close collaboration with our global Trouw Nutrition and Skretting customer-facing teams. Many of Nutreco’s Phyto-complexes come from plants that haven’t been cultivated before, which requires the team at the Garden of the Future to have a high level of plant production expertise, to create vertically integrated plant supply chains for these new plants.
Nutreco’s Garden of the Future will help us address many of the specific challenges our customers face and support them in improving performance, health and welfare in unprecedented new ways. The work being done here is truly groundbreaking – Nutreco’s Phyto-complexes are unmatched in quality and consistency and most use plants that have never before been cultivated for animal nutrition. We believe these products will benefit producers around the world and play a very important role in helping us achieve our purpose of Feeding the Future
The team at Nutreco’s Garden of the Future has already taken great strides in filling our innovation portfolio with new solutions directly addressing our customers’ challenges, with four Phyto-complex products already launched and 17 in the pipeline. So far, we have collected around 450 unique plant material samples and are performing field trials and production in seven countries. We’re excited to present this new facility, and the pioneering work of our Exploration team, to our colleagues, journalists and customers this week.
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